


Zwischenzug

by nagapdragon



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Q, During Skyfall, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, M/M, Post-Skyfall, Q is a Holmes, SPECTRE Fix-It, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-05-07 03:37:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5441975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagapdragon/pseuds/nagapdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One Holmes brother is on the side of the angels, another on the side of order, and the third? He's on a side all to himself.</p><p>(The story behind 'what happened to the other one')</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One: Zwischenzug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Q is more than he seems, Double-0s make excellent stalkers, and people don't always stay dead.

_zwischenzug_

(n.) in chess, a tactical move interpolated into an exchange or series of exchanges to improve the outcome

 

***

 

There’s no such thing as a code that can break into any system.

He tells the man in the expensive suit as much, ignoring the red dot pointed unwaveringly at his heart. If they really wanted to kill him, they’d aim for his head instead. Intimidation, and rather obviously done at that. He tells them that much and the light blinks out, the sniper in the eaves no longer bothering to threaten him. 

Or maybe there’s just now a dot on his forehead. As he can’t see it, the effect’s the same either way. Quincy picks at a loose thread in his cardigan, bored with the proceedings already. 

The man in the suit smiles a shark’s grin and offers his hand.

“James Moriarty. You and I, Pestilence, are going to do big things.”

 

***

 

Moriarty doesn’t ask for much. Information, mostly, about the movements of various players in this great game of his and the occasional erasure of information when they start to figure too much out about him. Quincy builds increasingly undetectable cameras for Moriarty and builds the technology to not quite detect them for MI6, builds himself backdoors into every system he gets to touch, and works quietly and efficiently until Boothroyd gives him increasingly confidential work. 

A career in espionage is boring after a life spent on the run, Quincy decides, and tries to outfit his cats as part of his flat’s security system. 

 

***

 

He’s working on an exploding pen when he gets the text- Boothroyd has a fondness for the classics and what the Quartermaster wants, the Quartermaster gets, no matter how much a waste of Quincy’s rather considerable computer skills it is to have him miniaturizing denotators. His engineering skills aren’t inconsiderable, either, hence why he’s being trusted with the toys that explode, but there’s half a dozen techs in Q Branch who could be doing this and absolutely none of them who invent encryption systems in their spare time.

Well.

Not any of them who invent _good_ encryption systems, by Quincy’s standards, and certainly not anyone who could even dream of cracking the very first layer of security on his laptop. Standard protocol for field agents is still to try and steal hard drives instead of data. More often than not, that ends up with nobody getting the data and Q Branch adding another broken hard drive to the teetering stack in the back storage room. Boothroyd still uses _Internet Explorer_ and he’s supposed to be MI6’s technology pioneer! 

His phone trills again, reminding him that he has a message. Quincy sighs when he sees the unknown number. Caller ID is incredibly overrated when he works with spies who go through phones as quickly as tissues. 

_It’s time. Jim xoxo_

He deletes the message as soon as he reads it, setting the prototype pen aside and sliding his laptop in front of him instead. First is waking a discreet program that’s been sleeping in M’s computer since her last update, interrupting her systems with something horrifically flashy and setting off alerts. Then he sets the timer, packs up his laptop, and heads to an early lunch. 

The explosion goes off before he’s quite clear of the building, throwing him from his feet and bestowing unto him a lovely collection of scrapes and bruises. Quincy shakes his head against the ringing in his ears, stumbling to his feet and away from MI6, collapsing into the arms of the first responders. They give him an orange blanket and an antiseptic wipe for the worst of his cuts, too busy with the retrieval efforts to pay him much more attention than that. 

Two days and twenty-three flag-covered coffins later, M names him Quartermaster. 

(He saves the CCTV footage of Moriarty dancing with a fire extinguisher. It’s always good to have some blackmail material.)

 

***

 

It wasn’t entirely bravado, his retort to 007 in front of _The Fighting Temeraire_. 

He’d been warned- by M, by Eve, by every single person who worked with Agent 007 in his surprisingly short and exceedingly bloody career that the man has a way of using just enough words to be exquisitely irritating. Eve went so far as to make him a list of exactly what 007 was likely to insult him on.

_Age._

_That godawful cardigan you’re insisting on wearing._

_Acne._

_That godawful shirt you’re insisting on wearing._

_The number of Double-0 missions you’ve handled._

_Q, darling, have you ever heard of a hairbrush?_

_Did I mention the cardigan?_

Her list was… accurate, albeit rather more extensive than it needed to be. The only thing she missed was 007’s attack on his competence and that was less of an oversight than an understanding that Q is perfectly capable of proving he’s capable. Eve knows that better than most. 

Still.

It was no reason to lose his temper and snap at him. Q can cause more damage in his pajamas before his first cup of Earl Grey than 007 can in a year in the field. Just… not strictly for MI6.

Q slams his hands down on his keyboard, splashing _as;lgjqijwf_ across his neat lines of code, and sighs. Eve will handle 007. He trusts in that just as much as he trusts in her impeccable aim- 007’s always been a little too troublesome, a little too close to things he’s better off not knowing, and it isn’t Eve’s fault that 007’s made a hobby of resurrection. For now, all he can do is wait for either Eve or 007 to report back from Macau, keep tabs on Sherlock Holmes’ sulking and Mycroft Holmes’ scheming, and keep designing new and beautifully innovative things for his agents to break. 

Lovely.

He has palmprint-encoded pistols to finish for most of the Double-0s and a new sniper rifle to test for Eve. There’s boxes and boxes of Boothroyd’s surviving prototypes left to sort through, most of them entirely separated from any kind of documentation they might once have had. Q’s been assuming they all explode until proven otherwise, which makes all of it take longer than it should. When 007’s radio pings them far further from Macau than he had any reason to be, Q’s almost grateful to be called to comms. 

“003, what’s the situation on the ground?”

 

***

 

Q hates- absolutely _hates_ \- faking his own incompetence. 

Raoul Silva taunts and smiles and runs, but only where Q can open the doors in front of him. He’s good enough with computers to have drawn Moriarty’s interest in the search for the elusive hacker known as Pestilence, but not good enough to hold it once he found Q. Disposable, then, once he paid the consulting criminal’s exorbitant prices and got his revenge out of it. Silva won’t survive this fight, whether 007 gets to him first or not. He’s simply seen too much.

There are worse things than a dead customer, in their business.

 

***

 

Olivia Mansfield’s funeral is a solemn affair attended by everyone who’s anyone in the British government. In attendance they have diplomats and ministers, officials from friendly intelligence agencies and almost everyone from both MI5 and MI6, and even a representative from the Palace here to pay the Crown’s condolences. In lieu of her long-deceased family, Q stands beside M and Eve at the flag-draped casket, keeping up an unending murmur of _thank you, thank you_ and _she will be sorely missed_. 

She would’ve hated it.

She was a good person. A harsh one, perhaps, and certainly one more prone to shout abuse than praise, but a good one. She protected her people to the best of her abilities even when it meant dealing in the murky grey areas of morality, bartering lives like poker chips and almost always winning. Q’s fairly certain she knew he was freelancing, but so long as he wasn’t selling secrets she didn’t particularly care. He will miss her, no matter that his life will be easier with a new, inexperienced M in the office.

He avoids Mycroft Holmes as a matter of habit. The man’s too sharp by half. Smarter than his brother, for all Sherlock likes to pretend otherwise, and Q wouldn’t risk spending any amount of time with Sherlock, either. It’s like a game of chess to avoid Mycroft Holmes without him noticing- Q socializes with officials he knows Mycroft isn’t fond of and always keeps a Double-0 close, throws other people in Mycroft’s path with a murmured _oh, is that Mycroft Holmes! Wouldn’t he be the person to ask about that?_ So far, it seems to be working. 

007 pretends not to show, sneaking in partway through to sit in the back row and leaving before the ceremony’s end, watching from a distance at the grave. Q and Eve don’t leave immediately afterwards, pacing away through the cemetery with Eve’s arm looped through Q’s. When they’re out of earshot 007 slinks forward, murmuring something to the headstone and pouring a measure from his flask onto fresh-turned earth. 

“He’s going to be trouble,” Q warns, “and you know how the boss feels about trouble.”

“Don’t worry about James Bond,” Eve scoffs. “Just give him a puzzle, dear Quartermaster, and watch him dance.”

 

***

 

James Bond likes good alcohol, expensive cars, and dangerous lovers.

Q has a flat that’s carefully expensive without being too expensive for his MI6 salary, two cats who he never managed to outfit with lethal weaponry but who play with each other with laser pointer harnesses, and more secrets than anyone should have in the company of spies. He’s Pestilence, one of the four great black hat hackers of their age, and he’s Q10, one of the best hackers on the side of the angels. The question isn’t what puzzle can he give to 007, it’s what puzzle won’t expose too many of Q’s secrets.

That’s the catch, isn’t it? The best kind of puzzle he can offer is one of his secrets to unravel, but the question is how far James Bond will go to find the rest. 

He turns the flash drive over and over and over between his fingers, considering every scratch and stain on the cheap plastic casing. It contains a clue to the one puzzle the great Sherlock Holmes won’t attempt: the fate of Siger and Sherrinford Holmes after they vanished nearly twenty-five years ago. 

He sighs, propping the flash drive up against his laptop screen, and sends an email before he can second guess himself. 

 

_Bond-_

_I remember telling you that sometimes, a trigger needs to be pulled. Much as I regret to admit it, I have need of your services on a puzzle. Some things, after all, must be done from the side of a keyboard that I am less familiar with._

_Q_

 

When Bond arrives, Q tosses the flash drive carelessly to him as if he hasn’t been turning it over in her hands again and again while he waited and leans back into his chair.

“Shut the door.”

There’s a moment with Bond- with all the Double-0s, but with Bond more than the others- where Q can see him contemplating obedience. It’s a moment of resistance, a glacial moment of consideration in those blue eyes, and then he turns in a smooth motion and closes the door.

“Now lock it.”

Bond complies faster this time, taking the seat across from Q and sliding the flash drive across his desk once the lock clicks. He settles back into his chair, crosses his arms, and waits for Q to speak. Q raises an eyebrow and fiddles with his phone. He can’t be silently patient the way the agents can, but he’s perfectly capable of out-stubborning them. 

Bond breaks first.

“What’s this?”

“You’re heard of Siger Holmes.”

Bond narrows his eyes like it’s a test. “Everyone in our business has heard of Siger Holmes. Head of an international smuggling ring, married a Double-0, then got himself and one of his kids killed. By the time I started with MI6, Mycroft Holmes was high enough in MI5 that the story was taboo. I’m surprised you’re even old enough to know about it.”

Q leans forward, tapping the flash drive and just barely not touching Bond’s hand. This was a good choice, risky as it is. Bond’s interested, he’s engaged, and if he’s searching for traces Q himself erased years ago then he isn’t going to find the heart of Moriarty’s web in one of the premier intelligence agencies in the world. 

This, though. This is where it gets tricky. One little lie, one little reason for him to give this information to Bond because they don’t trust each other, not really. It isn’t personal. Bond trusts no one and Q? He trusts himself and that’s about it. 

“Quantum.”

Bond stills but doesn’t say anything, letting Q continue.

“Mr. White resurfaced briefly. We couldn’t identify one of the men. A tech in Q Branch is obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and commented that, given a few decades, he could look like our mystery man.” Q shrugs. “I did a little digging. There’s a lot of inconsistencies in the autopsy report. That flash drive has what I found out so far.”

Bond doesn’t say anything when Q finishes. He doesn’t have to. They both know Bond’s on lockdown in the wake of Skyfall, that he’s been playing bodyguard for Eve because he isn’t authorized for missions. This wouldn’t be the kind of mission he likes, but if there’s a lead Q can authorize him to follow it whether he’s allowed out of the country or not. 

With those kind of stakes, there will be a lead. 

Bond’s hand closes over Q’s for a moment as he scoops the flash drive up, inclining his head to Q. It vanishes into his jacket as he stands and rebuttons it, giving his cuffs a cursory tug to straighten then. 

“As you wish,” he drawls, pausing on his way out to look over his shoulder, “Q.”

“007,” Q acknowledges with a nod of his own. 

Bond leaves as quietly as he arrived, stalking soundlessly through Q Branch without harassing a single tech. The techs stare after him in shock. Double-0s are known for causing chaos wherever they go, Q Branch very much included. For him to arrive and leave without so much as flirting with Eloise or moving the stapler on Michael’s desk… it’s unusual, to say the least. Almost as one, the techs turn to look at Q standing in the door of his office. He shrugs and they all go back to work.

Sherrinford Holmes. 

Q shakes his head and gets back to work himself. It’s been a long, long time since he heard that name. He’s been all the better for it. Bond will only be the latest in a long line of people hunting for Sherrinford Holmes, no matter that he died twenty years ago.

After all, Sherrinford Holmes may be dead, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still walking around.

 

***

 

The first time someone follows him home, Q takes a roundabout route and loses his tail in a crowd, slipping through a sandwich shop that launders money on the side and hiding in the kitchen with one eye on the door. Joe slides him a sandwich without quite making eye contact, muttering _on the house_ before he returns to his other orders. When he doesn’t see anybody after half an hour, he takes two trains, a cab, and walks the last few blocks to his flat. 

The next day, he does the same thing, stopping at a laundromat and watching soap operas with the proprietor until the shadows grow long and he’s found out as much about Moriarty’s jurors as he can without a secure connection. 

The day after that, he catches a glimpse of blond hair and an expensive suit as he ducks into a bakery and takes the table in the back corner, laptop out and hood up like some teenage hacker on the run in American movies. Too persistent- and skilled- to be common criminals, rival intelligence agencies don’t know what he looks like, and Moriarty put the fear of… well, the fear of Moriarty into any enemies of Pestilence’s who know what he actually looks like. Could be Trevelyan, more likely it’s Bond. 

So he has some fun. 

Over the next month, Q interrupts muggings and organizes a hostage situation at the bank he prefers for his legitimate transactions, walking away without a scratch time and time again while pretending not to notice Bond getting more and more frazzled with each attempt to protect him. He hides in cafes and restaurants and tailors’ shops, sneaks into lectures on anything he can and blends in with the students, and on one memorable occasion he sneaks back into MI6 and bribes Trevelyan with testing new explosives in exchange for a promise not to tell Bond where he is. 

“What did you do?” Eve asks him from their favorite lunch spot, watching Bond finish a street fight Q picked with some local thugs who’ve been Moriarty’s muscle in the area lately. “Two months ago, M was expecting that Bond would either go rogue or retire under mandatory leave while they figured out the details of what happened at Skyfall. She was his leash, the thing that kept him tied to MI6 even more than Queen and Country.”

“I don’t think this is exactly sanctioned by MI6,” Q demurs, tipping his head towards the street where Bond has the last thug pinned against the wall, threatening him with something. 

“It would be if M noticed.” Eve raises an eyebrow. “He’d make Bond your official bodyguard in a moment if he thought you could put a leash on 007.”

“Please don’t.” Q takes a sip of his tea to have an excuse to look away from Eve. “How do you expect me to get any work done with a Double-0 sitting on my shoulder?”

“Could do worse than a pet Double-0.” Eve leans across the cracked formica of their two-top table, pressing her lips to his cheekbone and whispering in his ear. “You know how Jim feels about clever little things with pet killers, after all.”

“Not as well as you do, I imagine.”

Eve sits back with a self-satisfied smile, folding her hands primly in her lap, and meets Q stare for stare. Q breaks first, turning his gaze down to fidget with his phone. 

“Whatever you did,” she murmurs, watching Bond dust off his suit and try not to look like he just beat up a pack of street thugs, “I think he’d follow you anywhere.”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”

 

***

 

“Mary Jones,” Trevelyan repeats skeptically, turning on his heel to stare directly into the camera in his hotel room. “Ex-CIA, retired three years ago and suspected of freelancing within six months of her retirement. Last known location is an animal shelter in Romania?” His voice gets a little high and funny on the last bit, pacing wildly across his hotel room. 

She’s not their usual target, Q’ll give Trevelyan that, but Mary Jones has survived after going freelance exactly because she’s not quite as flashy as the run-of-the-mill criminal. Nobody looks at the ever-smiling woman saving kittens in the rain and thinks she must have a body count to her name. Q can respect that. It’s how Pestilence went unnoticed for years, after all. 

“Mary Jones has a body count nearly as high as yours, 006,” Q reminds him, sounding bored, “so you’d do well not to underestimate her. I’d hate to have to break in a new Double-0 when I just got you trained to fetch.”

Bond huffs out a short laugh from his post in the corner of Q’s office while Trevelyan makes a face at the surveillance camera. He gave up stalking Q in lieu of being his unofficial bodyguard after it became clear that Q knew exactly what he was doing. Eve’s still laughing about it while M just shook his head and muttered something about how he’d make it permanent if he didn’t think they’d accidentally destroy MI6. 

“But why send me? 001 likes cats. 008 even likes cats _and_ dogs.”

“Trevelyan, pout as prettily as you like, but you’re still going to go volunteer at the animal shelter tomorrow and make friends with anyone who knew her. If we heard whispers that Mary Jones might be looking to go legitimate again, other agencies will have too.” True, the whispers they heard were mostly ones Q picked up through old contacts of his that MI6 doesn’t know he has, but she’s good enough that he’d really rather keep her out of anyone else’s hands. 

Trevelyan argues it halfheartedly for a little while longer before flopping onto his hotel bed and turning on the television. He’s always been one of the more contrary agents, likely to argue for the sake of it despite having all intentions of doing what he’s told anyways. Q flicks through the channel guide, advises Trevelyan which channel has the reruns of children’s shows, and signs off when Trevelyan sticks one hand up blindly to flip him off. 

Q sighs, tipping his mug to look at the sad little dribble of tea left in the bottom, and holds it out to Bond. He shakes it a little bit to catch Bond’s attention when his mug isn’t immediately taken from him, using his free hand to open up the Facebook page for the fake identity he was creating. 

“What.” Bond demands, his voice utterly flat.

“Tea,” Q replies just as crisply. “I’m out.”

“You have minions for that.”

“I know. That’s why I’m handing you my mug.”

Bond takes it and not quite stomps off, apparently deciding it’s not worth the effort to argue. Q checks the news feed- _Moriarty Verdict: Not Guilty_ \- and the cameras hidden in Baker Street to find Moriarty perched in the chair Sherlock prefers. He’s back to creating a clean identity for Mary Jones when Bond returns with a full mug of coffee, the asshole, that he proceeds to perch on the edge of Q’s desk and drink. 

“Don’t you have minions to create false identities for you?”

“I do,” Q drawls, ignoring the warmth emanating off Bond as he leans over Q’s shoulder, watching him work. “There are people who do nothing but create false identities for you and maintain them. Caroline does a beautiful job cultivating a dedicated LinkedIn page for your imports-exports job complete with a Facebook page where you bitch about your boss. She peppers it with actual quotes from you so it stays authentic to how you speak.”

“Yes,” Bond replies, retreating to sit next to Q’s keyboard again. “As impressive as Caroline undoubtedly is at pretending to be me, it still begs the question of why you’re the one creating a false identity for Miss Mary Jones?”

“Because it has to hold up to the highest scrutiny,” Q says, leaning back to meet Bond’s eyes, “and because I’m the best.”

Bond doesn’t answer immediately, setting Q’s mug aside and leaning back on his hands. His eyes skim over Q with all the analytical sharpness that’s kept him alive all those years in the field and he smiles, satisfied with whatever it is he sees. 

“You are, aren’t you?” 

There’s a faint edge of wonder in his voice and Q remembers suddenly that he ought to fidget under Bond’s gaze. Normal people don’t meet a Double-0 stare for stare in full knowledge of what he’s capable of. Pestilence is the unflappable one, the one who doesn’t flinch in the face of Jim Moriarty’s wrath. Q makes bad jokes and drinks a lot of tea and has moments of bravado that the other Double-0s have told him are cute. He has competence in spades. What he usually doesn’t show is the assertiveness that he knows exactly how good he is.

Q ducks his head and looks back to his computer, organizing the photographs others in Q Branch have mocked up into Facebook albums and changing the upload dates to look real. Loaves of freshly-baked bread, some uneven and others almost perfect, all with anecdotes about imperfection and things that taste good no matter how they look. Group photos with friends half-blurry in the background and others with MI6 agents to firm up her cover, artistic pictures of various vacations, some with her in it, and a few mournful photos of blurry headstones with a wreath of flowers blocking the names. 

“Meet the woman who will be 004, Bond,” Q says, scrolling back to the top of the page. “Mary Elizabeth Morstan.”

 

***

 

“ _Quin~cy._ ”

Q freezes in the entrance to his flat, stopping mid-stride, then slowly closes and locks the door behind himself. 

“Moriarty.”

James Moriarty is draped haphazardly over Q’s couch, pale skin near to glowing in the moonlight and both dark suit and dark hair artfully disheveled. His head lolls to the side bonelessly, cold eyes sharp on Q’s face while he waves a lazy greeting. 

“ _Quin~cy_ , darling,” Moriarty sing-songs, “I’ve _told_ you to call me Jim. We’ve come _so far_ together, my dear Pestilence.”

“Glad to see prison hasn’t taken away any of your charm, _Jim_ ,” Q says archly, dropping his groceries in the kitchen and perching on the back of the couch. He doesn’t entirely trust Moriarty- he’d be a utter fool to trust James Moriarty- but he does trust in the fact that Moriarty needs him. So long as he holds back, so long as Moriarty still needs the next thing and the thing after that from him, he’s safe. 

As safe as he can be, at least, while he’s a criminal mole inside an agency that still has the hacker Pestilence as one of their most sought-after targets. Just because Moriarty won’t outright kill him doesn’t mean he can’t make his life very, very difficult. 

“So _spiteful_ , Quincy. What have I done to earn that?”

“Brought Mycroft Holmes down on MI6 in an attempt to use me to find evidence against you?” Q shrugs, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling. “You can imagine how much I appreciated that.”

Moriarty blows a raspberry at either Q or the ceiling. Q doesn’t care to check.

“Oh, and you had me kill my friends and coworkers so you could make a point to dear Sherlock about how untouchable you are. Or were you flirting with Mycroft?” Q _tsks_ , shaking his head. “Somehow, _Jim_ , I don’t think Evie’d approve.”

Moriarty’s only reply is to shove the barrel of his gun into Q’s lumbar spine. He doesn’t bother even clicking off the safety. They both know it’s nothing but an idle threat. 

“Keep them away from me,” Q hisses, dropping to his feet and twisting to face Moriarty. He leans in, letting Moriarty press the gun to his throat while bright interest flares in the dark depths of his eyes. “My return to England was contingent upon two things. First, you protect me in the case in which my cover is blown. Second, you keep Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes the hell away from me.”

Moriarty moves like a snake, free hand fisting in Q’s collar to drag him down until they’re breathing the same air. He presses the gun into the tender underside of Q’s jaw, forcing his chin up and clicking the safety off, his lips pressed to Q’s throat in a mockery of affection.

“You’d do best, Quincy darling,” he murmurs, “to remember who holds your strings.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Maybe I am,” Moriarty whispers, lips ghosting across Q’s skin until he can whisper in Q’s ear. “But we have work to do.”

Moriarty shoves Q away and slides to his feet, pacing over to the window and throwing the curtains wide, basking in the moonlight. He turns with his arms still thrown wide, always the showman, and inclines a tiny bow. 

“Can’t you feel it in the air? The game is coming to its end, ladies and gentlemen, and children don’t just kidnap themselves!”

“I don’t kidnap children.” Q steps away from the couch, tugging his cuffs sharply and not-quite-glaring at Moriarty with every inch of haughtiness in his bones. “You have disposable henchmen for that.”

Moriarty laughs, giving him a round of applause. “Keep that up. I have a big black coat and a lovely blue scarf for you- you’ll look dashing or ominous or whatever it is that Sherlock’s going for.”

Q strides across the room, sprawling bonelessly across his favorite armchair. There’s three handguns hidden within arm’s reach of him, all coded to his palmprint, but Moriarty’s no doubt unloaded or removed them all. If he’s not fool enough to trust Moriarty, well, Moriarty’s not fool enough to trust him either. 

“What would you like me to do, Jim?” he bites out every syllable sparingly, going for disdain rather than anger. He can’t use anger against Moriarty. The man thrives off it. Haughtiness, disdain, nonchalance- he has to use Moriarty’s own weapons against him if he intends to avoid becoming a mere pawn in the great game. 

“Like I said,” Moriarty drawls, back to lazy disinterest and that irritating sing-song of his, “children don’t just kidnap themselves. Sherlock won’t be able to resist and this time, I want _e~verybody’s_ prime suspect to be our dear detective friend.”

Q watches Moriarty, considering his next words. For once, he holds some kind of power over his next move. Moriarty likes keeping Pestilence in the shadows, the hidden power behind his throne, and Q’s perfectly happy to stay hidden. Exposing him is a risk in and of itself, having him play at being _Sherlock_ is yet another. Mycroft, at least, will make great strides to find whoever impersonated his brother and unlike Sherlock, Mycroft’s actually seen Q. 

It’s a bad idea. 

It’s a really bad idea.

“When would you like to start?”

 

***

 

James Bond’s loyalty runs deep and, once given, is never retracted.

Queen and Country.

Olivia Mansfield.

Alec Trevelyan.

Vesper Lynd.

Q, according to Eve, might as well be on the list already. To hear her say it, Bond’s attached his loyalty to Q instead of Mallory and M, in his infinite wisdom, has accepted that as a safe alternative. Q proved his loyalty in the wake of the very explosion he sparked. He’s safe. 

That much makes Eve laugh. For all that Mansfield was a technological luddite, she at least understood that someone with Q’s skills in all things electronic will never be safe. He doesn’t just gather information- he controls it. A valuable skill in an ally, to be sure, and a horrifying one in an enemy. Mansfield, Q thinks, would’ve given him an around-the-clock shadow and kept him on as Quartermaster if she found out about his allegiances. 

Finding James Bond dozing on his couch when he gets back from kidnapping the ambassador’s kids, he has to admit, is a much better surprise than finding Moriarty there the week before. Q still freezes and goes for the closest gun, holding it steady on Bond until one blue eye cracks open. 

“Q,” Bond… well, directed at anyone else he’d call it a purr, but except for the stalking he’s been nothing but professionally courteous. “You’re home late.”

“Got distracted,” Q replies, lowering his weapon but not putting it away. “Sat down at a cafe to work on my paper for the conference next month and the next thing I know, my tea’s gone cold and it’s dark out. Why are you here?”

“Some ambassador’s kids got nabbed, put MI5 and MI6 on high alert. Alec picked rock, so he’s stuck on patrol for first watch.” Bond smiles, a quiet half-smile that’s nothing like the sharp smiles Agent 007 favors. “Alec always picks rock.”

Q blinks once, then again, wondering if he’s really tired enough to be imagining things. It’s a good thing Q’s paranoid, that he ditched the coat and the scarf in two separate skips long before he started to head home, because the absolute last thing he needs is two suspicious Double-0s. 

“Does that mean Trevelyan’s out scaring my neighbors?”

Bond considers his answer for a moment. “Maybe?”

Q sighs, securing his gun back in its hiding spot and heading straight for the kitchen to get a glass of water. 

“M dispatched two Double-0s to protect me because some kids ran off?”

“M may or may not have sent us.” Bond shifts uncomfortably, settling back into stillness almost immediately. “Go to sleep, Q. Alec has the perimeter secured and I’ll be on guard all night.”

Overprotective. It was endearing when Mansfield complained about Double-0s invading her flat any time there was the slightest threat. It’s less so now that they’re doing it to him. Q finishes his water and heads to bed, not bothering to check the windows and re-lock the door. He’s got a Double-0 sitting on guard in his living room and another probably frightening his neighbors half to death outside. If they haven’t already secured everything, they will, so he’s free to be lazy. 

“I need to get better locks,” he mumbles to himself as he falls into bed, tugging the blankets up around his ears and running a loving touch over the handgun concealed between his mattress and the headboard. He shouldn’t be this comfortable with someone else in his space, he really shouldn’t. 

_This_ , he thinks as sleep takes him, _is going to get me killed._

 

***

 

He wakes in the morning to murmured conversation from the foot of his bed.

“He’s my Quartermaster too, James.”

“You’re my best friend, Alec. You have to trust me.”

“No, I don’t. That’s part of the benefit of being your best friend- I get to tell you when you’re being stupid and in return, you don’t shoot me for it.”

“Alec…”

“Don’t. Just don’t. You’re hiding things from me? Fine. But don’t try to argue that you’re not being stupid because you are. You’re stupid, you’re reckless, and you aren’t as invincible as you think you are.”

“And you two,” he interrupts before Bond can reply, “are not as quiet as you think you are.”

Trevelyan flushes red at being caught out, the color flaring bright against his eternally pale skin, and he flops down to sit on the end of Q’s bed. Q yanks his feet out of the way before six and a half feet of Double-0 can land on them, giving Trevelyan a distinctly irritated look. 

“Sorry, Q,” he sing-songs, entirely unrepentant. 

“You could at least try to make that convincing.”

“I could,” Trevelyan argues, “or I could go get eggs because your kitchen is remarkably bare of anything but weapons.” He doesn’t make any moves to stand, sprawling across the foot of Q’s bed like personal space isn’t a thing that people have. Q pokes at his hip with one foot, enjoying the easy camaraderie Trevelyan inspires in everyone around him without ever quite taking his eyes off Bond watching from the doorway. 

“If your cooking poisons me, Trevelyan, I’m setting Eve on you.”

“If my cooking poisons you, I’m pretty sure she’ll have to get in line.” Trevelyan tips his head not-so-subtly to Bond, fighting a losing battle to keep a straight face. “Tell me, Q, when was the last time you had more than tea for breakfast?”

“If I tell you, will you get me a cup of tea?” Q levers himself up to sit with his back against his headboard, crossing his arms and giving them his best disappointed glower for waking him up and not bothering to bring tea or, at the very least, coffee.

It’s rude, if you ask him. 

“Breakfast, Alec,” Bond orders. “Q, get dressed.” He turns on his heel and stalks out, icily cold. Q looks from his empty doorway and Bond’s retreating back to Trevelyan draped over his lap like some oversized cat, then back again.

“What the hell was that about?”

“Q,” Trevelyan replies, stretching lazily before getting to his feet, “you’ll have to trust me when I say I have no idea.”

Trevelyan leaves him then, closing the door with the barest squeak of hinges that Q refuses to fix. His flat is expensive in all the right ways- except for the locks, apparently- but he picked an old building that squeaks and groans and complains so that he can track movement through his home. The Double-0s are quiet, but they don’t know exactly where the squeaky boards in the hall or the specific cabinets that creak louder than others are. 

Still, Q hasn’t gotten this far by trusting people blindly, and especially not spies. They’d notice concealed guns, so he opts for skinny knives and a coil of sharp wire, lockpicks and trackers and an explosive watch he keeps out of misplaced fondness for Major Boothroyd. 

“Alec left,” Bond calls from the kitchen as Q leaves his room. “There’s tea by your chair.”

“How did you know it’s my chair?” Q asks, snagging a blanket from his couch and curling up in his chair, bare feet tucked under him for warmth. His tea’s just starting to cool in one of the Scrabble mugs Eve thinks are funny to give him every Christmas- she used to rearrange them to spell QUINCY on the shelf, but the C broke in the explosion at MI6. Undoubtedly a replacement will appear in his flat after the next time she visits.

“Three guns, four knives, and something I didn’t dare touch that looked like a detonator within arm’s reach.” Bond slips two eggs onto a plate next to some toast, setting the plate aside to prepare a second one. “There’s only a single gun holstered underneath the couch and a knife in that hidden little pocket at the other end. The chair’s also in the best strategic position as far as defense goes, though the couch is better for covering all the exits.”

“Fair enough,” Q agrees, accepting a plate from Bond. It’s not a terribly fancy breakfast, but it’s well made and far better than the cereal and milk that’s his usual fare. He’s not terribly fond of Bond snooping, but he couldn’t expect anything less from _spies_. He doesn’t leave anything incriminating out. The weapons are the worst of it and, knowing Bond and Trevelyan, he’s surprised they didn’t congratulate him on his foresight to protect himself.

They finish breakfast in silence while Q juggles his food, his tea, and his laptop, ensuring that Q Branch hasn’t collapsed in his absence. He glances over top of his screen at Bond when he finishes going through his email backlog, then checks cameras in Baker Street to watch John Watson eat his breakfast while Sherlock sleeps sprawled in his chair, violin slipping from his fingers to rest on the floor at his feet. Mycroft Holmes sits in his office under a backlog of MI5 paperwork, pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off a migraine. His PA, who changes identities more often than the Double-0s, sets a cup at his elbow and smiles sadly as she places another stack of papers on one of the few open spaces. Business as usual, then. 

He doesn’t notice Bond until he’s right in front of him, sliding Q’s laptop out from under his hands. Bond takes a glance at the feeds live on his screen and Q flinches back- there’s no way Bond, with his eye for faces, won’t recognize Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes. He looks back at Q, raising an eyebrow, and then closes Q’s laptop, setting it just outside of his reach. 

“You might be perhaps the first Quartermaster in a century to prefer the title because your name is worse,” Bond says conversationally, “Sherrinford.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I ran a DNA test.”

Q sags into his chair. Bond’s terrifyingly smart. He knew that, he really did, but he was expecting Bond to try and track down Siger, not find Sherrinford. Bond must’ve been discreet, if Mycroft isn’t already having him swept away to some safehouse for his own protection. He has the power to do it, if not the power to make MI6 stop asking questions. 

“Against whose DNA?”

“Sherlock Holmes. I saved Watson’s life when I was tracking some faction selling weapons in Afghanistan, said he’d convince Holmes not to ask questions to clear the debt.”

Q meets Bond’s eyes. “You told Alec.”

“I tell Alec everything.”

“But you haven’t told the world. Or my brothers.”

“I trust you.” Bond shrugs, turning his back to return to the couch. “You’ve saved my life and kept my secrets. I’ll do the same for you, Sherrinford.”

Q closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, clenching his fists to try and stop the slight shaking in his hands. He’ll be fine. Eve knew already, Moriarty knew, it was just the rest of the world he kept his secret from. Nobody’s telling Sherlock and, more importantly, nobody’s telling _Mycroft._ He’s _fine_. 

“Quincy,” he manages, digging his nails into the palm of his hand. “Sherrinford’s awful. I prefer Quincy.”

“Quincy it is,” Bond agrees, smiling something soft and completely unlike the brittle-edged professional smile he turns to the world. “Call me James, Quincy.”

 

***

 

“Yes, you look pretty, Quincy, now stop stalling and get out here.”

Q glares at the bathroom door like it’ll make Eve leave him alone and tugs the cuffs of his jacket one last time. It’s not like he never wears suits, just that he never wears suits. He runs a hand through his curls uncomfortably, mussing them into a state of even greater disorder, and scowls at his reflection.

Well, there’s no helping it. 

He throws open the door before he can second-guess himself, straightening up into perfect posture and regarding Eve with a haughty lift of his chin. She falls silent, losing whatever she was about to say, and then raises her eyebrows. 

“You look good.”

“I look ridiculous.” 

“Maybe.” Eve paces around him, straightening his collar and the fall of his jacket. “You look like Sherlock Holmes, and I’ve always thought he is a very ridiculous man.”

Q rolls his eyes, fidgeting one final time with the lay of his jacket. It’s cut tighter than Q would recommend for anyone wearing a shoulder holster, despite being beautifully cut to compensate for that, all because Moriarty wants all his pieces to look their best for the big day. He’s carrying one of his own handguns, encoded to his palmprint and his alone without any of the overrides he has built into the Double-0 weapons for testing and such, along with as many miscellaneous tools as he can hide. Undoubtedly Eve is hiding much the same under one of her sheath dresses that look too tight to hide anything and are anything but, though she also has a hard case leaning against the wall next to her with the bio-locks that mean one of Q’s custom rifles. 

“I’m assuming you have a location?”

Eve grins like a shark. “St. Bart’s. I’ll signal you when you’re to make your grand entrance, once the boss gets bored of talking at Holmes.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Jim’s orders.” Eve picks up her case and leads the way out of his flat, dodging the cats as they try to wind around her ankles. “We may be the boss’ favorites, but that lasts only so long as we do what we’re told. Believe me, Quincy, you don’t want to see what happens when one of the boss’ favorites falls from grace.”

Q’s seen what happens to Moriarty’s former favorites. He’s helped to cover up their disappearances just as much as Eve does, for all that she’s more likely to be the one overseeing their internment in a new construction project or the bottom of the Thames. He’s fairly certain he could hide from Moriarty- the man’s only all-seeing because Q is, after all, and Moriarty only found Pestilence because he was only bothering to hide from Mycroft, Mummy, and whoever had a hit out on him this time.

The trick, he muses, would be evading Eve long enough to get out of town. They’ve worked together enough to be a package deal. If either of them disappears, the other one must either be blind and therefore useless to him or a conspirator and therefore a threat. He’s constantly monitoring her actions to save his own life. Moriarty is a lenient employer so long as Q behaves, but he isn’t exactly the writing letters of recommendation type. 

“Any ideas what he’s planning?”

Eve stays silent for long enough that he almost regrets asking. That’s the kind of question that might get him killed. He thought he and Eve had established a rapport beyond what they faked so that nobody wondered why they spent so much time together, but that kind of slip is a Bad Idea if he’s ever had one. 

“I think he wants Holmes to be one of us, or he wants to destroy him,” she finally answers. “It’s bound to be dramatic and the only ones guaranteed to survive are you and I because Jim, for all his flaws, knows that MI6 would hunt him to the ends of the earth for it.”

“You think the boss might not come out of this one unscathed?”

“He doesn’t usually do things face to face, you know that. If he’s pushed Holmes far enough, there might not be a lot of talking. Personally, I’m not sure Jim’s accounted for the volatility that is Sherlock Holmes. The man likes a puzzle, likes their great game, but if I’ve learned anything from the Double-0s it is that everyone is predictable up until a breaking point. It’s what they do from there that frightens me.”

They pass a group of tourists then, falling silent until they’re well past. Q has a clever little device in his pocket that subtly unfocuses all cameras in the area, letting them move unidentifiably through the city and ensuring that nobody gets an accidental photograph of them, but it’s still best they try not to be overheard. 

“I hope Holmes doesn’t kill him,” Q sighs. “I’ve just started to get attached to London again, I’d rather not have to disappear. And it’d make things awfully awkward with the Double-0s now that I’ve got them all well-trained.”

“Well-trained?”

“Ish.” Q laughs even thought it’s not quite funny, his nerves strung out on edge at the prospect of seeing Sherlock for the first time since he was four years old. Somehow, he thinks not-quite-dead Q won’t be met with the same enthusiasm as eight year old Sherlock usually gave to the sibling half his age. “It’s a work in progress.”

“A work in progress,” she murmurs. “I can’t disagree with that. Give me a hand, you’re quicker with locks than I am.”

Q slips his lockpicks out from his sleeve, taking a cursory glance around before working the door open. It’s a good perch that Eve’s chosen- not the ideal building for a sniper to take cover in, meaning nobody would think to look for her here, but with her skill she’s got a clear line of sight over the rooftop and the square below. 

“Steady hands,” he offers as she slips in through the gap, deftly navigating the rifle case at her side. 

“Steady nerves,” she retorts, leaning back out to press a feather-light kiss to his cheek and leaving the faintest smudge of lipstick there. “Be safe, Quincy. England might not fall without you, but I wouldn’t get nearly as many clever weapons from your replacement, and I do like my clever weapons.”

“Understood, Evie.” 

He steps away, listening for the click of the door behind Eve, and slips into the hospital by the dint of walking like he belongs there and giving anyone who dares question his presence a disbelieving look. He reckons that if he added a billowing coat, he’d look enough like Sherlock that even those questions would cease. He stays tucked in an alcove when Sherlock comes sauntering past, never bothering to look to either side as he makes his way to the roof, then cradles his phone in his hands and waits. 

_Steady, now. Three, two, one and go. E_

“And you know what?” Moriarty monologues, languid on the edge of the roof with his back to Eve’s building. “In the end, it was _easy!_ It was easy.”

Moriarty sighs, eyes skimming over Q like he’s not there in the background, closing them on that final disappointed word. 

“Now I’ve got to go back to playing with the ordinary people, and it turns out you’re ordinary, just like all of them.” He buries his face in his hands, the manic gleam Q’s become only too familiar with returning as he looks up, that sing-song lilt accompanying it. “Oh, well.”

Moriarty stands, closing the distance between himself and Sherlock, and Q catches Sherlock’s tiny flinch as Moriarty puts his hands in his pockets. 

“Did you almost start to wonder if I was real? Did I nearly get you?”

“Richard Brook,” Sherlock rumbles, watching him with sharp eyes and not bothering to voice the rest of his deductions brimming behind them. 

“Nobody seems to get the joke, but you do.”

“Of course.” 

Q would sigh, if it wouldn’t give his half-hidden position away. One person monologuing, one person with clipped replies, it’s like watching his hidden cameras in Sherlock’s flat with the roles reversed. Boring. Moriarty’s better than to be deflected by that, Sherlock ought to realize that by now. 

“Attaboy,” Moriarty murmurs, turning his back on Sherlock for the first time. 

“Richard Brook in German is Reichenbach,” Sherlock accedes. “The case that made my name.”

“Just tryin’ to have some fun,” Moriarty drawls in an affected accent, catching Q’s eyes now that Sherlock’s back is to the both of them and smiling, dropping the expression before he paces back into Sherlock’s view again. Sherlock taps something out on the back of his hand and both Q and Moriarty roll their eyes. “Good, you got that too.”

“Beats like digits. Every beat is a one, every rest is a zero. Binary code. That’s why all those assassins tried to save my life. It was hidden on me, hidden inside my head. A few simple lines of computer code that can break into any system.”

Moriarty shakes his head and _tsk_ s, giving Sherlock a mournful look. “Ordinary, I told you. You’re just like the rest of them. Binary code, but did you _read_ it?” Moriarty taps it out against his leg again, throwing his hands wide when he’s done. “Q-U-I-N-C-Y. A bit _obvious_ , really, but you were never going to get it otherwise.”

“Get what?” Sherlock reins himself in at the last minute, turning the sharp snap of the syllables into something just barely restrained behind his cool facade. 

“That there isn’t one.”

“There has to be.”

“There’s no such thing as a code that can break into any system,” Q says, stepping out of his hiding place and standing at the other end of the roof, silhouetted against the cloudy sky. They can’t be the only ones allowed to have a flair for the dramatic up here. It suits the occasion quite well. “There is, however, me.”

Sherlock turns on his heel so fast it’s almost comical, Moriarty smiling guilelessly behind him. Q keeps his chin high and his spine perfectly straight, mimicking Sherlock’s haughtiest posture and the nonchalant air of danger the Double-0s have to the best of his ability. 

“Who are you?” Sherlock demands, taking half a step before turning to face Moriarty again. “Who is he?”

“I told you,” Moriarty lilts, “but did you listen?”

“Dearest Mummy,” Q says absentmindedly, walking toward them in a slow amble that’s entirely at odds with how he normally moves. “Mummy was 001, one of the famous ones, and Daddy was the head of an international smuggling ring. They shared a fondness for expensive things, dangerous lovers, and saddling children with truly awful names. It was love at first assassination attempt. What that says about either of their tastes, I daren’t say.”

Sherlock makes an attempt to interrupt and Moriarty shushes him with a murmur in his ear and a wicked look Q’s way. Q’d prefer not to know what he said because Sherlock blanches, then steps away from Moriarty without trying to speak.

“They settled down into relative anonymity on an estate with more booby traps than roses and wasted no time on Mycroft, then Sherlock, then _really_ topped themselves on terrible names with little Sherrinford,” Q continues as if he was never almost interrupted, keeping his pace slow and unconcerned. “Of course, the lure of priceless Vermeers and lost DaVincis was too much, so Daddy started to dabble here and there. A business trip once a year, twice a season, every month. When his dear little Sherlock figured it out and alerted the authorities? He ran. Vanished with his youngest in to.” Q shrugs. “And then they both died.”

“Ancient history,” Sherlock drawls, making an attempt at composure. “I remember my own childhood, much as I’d like to forget the tragedy of my favorite brother.”

“Sherrinford,” Q drawls in return, taking the final step to halt just in front of Sherlock. “What an awful name. Not that Quintilian is much better, but at least it abbreviates well.”

He holds Sherlock’s gaze steadily until Sherlock finally cracks, eyes racing over Q’s features and cataloguing what he sees. In the suit, it’s painfully obvious- the same long-limbed frame, the high cheekbones and pale eyes and dark curls that he and Sherlock always shared. 

“You’re dead.”

“Quincy, darling, you’ll have to tell your doctor that he’s made a terrible mistake!” Moriarty mimes a gasp. “How _embarrassing_.”

Sherlock steps into Q’s personal space. Q doesn’t flinch, continuing to meet his eyes coolly. Sherlock will have to work quite a bit harder to disturb him- he’s used to dealing with the Double-0s looming and threatening and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Frankly, Sherlock can’t quite manage to be more imposing than barely-leashed assassins.  

“Why did you do it?”

“Not die? I was _four_ , Sherlock, I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Why did you work with _him_?”

“Because he paid me well for it.” Q shrugs, stepping away from Sherlock to sit on the ledge where Moriarty was earlier. He glances towards Eve’s building and a few moments later, the red dot of her scope flickers on his hand before vanishing again. It’s… not the most comforting thing she could’ve done. 

“You see, _Sher~lock_ , the best way to beat a Holmes is,” Moriarty holds out the last syllable, dragging it out into tense anticipation, “with a cleverer Holmes.Use you to beat Mycroft because he cares so, so very much about protecting you. Use Quincy to beat you both.” He sighs, letting it ripple through his entire form into a dramatic slump. 

“You created Rich Brook,” Sherlock accuses. “You can bring back Jim Moriarty.”

“It isn’t a matter of what I can do,” Q demurs. “It’s a matter of what I will do, brother dear, and Rich Brook was an inspired piece of work.”

“I beat you,” Moriarty murmurs, pacing over to the edge of the roof and looking over it. “Shall we finish the game? One final act. Glad you chose a tall building- nice way to do it.”

Eve was right. Moriarty would ask Sherlock to join us or he’d destroy him. London’s not big enough for the consulting detective and the consulting criminal, after all, and Moriarty only beat Sherlock with extensive help from Q. In close quarters, with access to all the same resources? They’d destroy each other out of competitiveness sooner or later. It’s rather the point of this whole affair. 

“Do it? Do what?” Confusion flickers across Sherlock’s expression, chased by understanding as regains control of his reactions. “Yes, of course. My suicide.”

“Genius detective proved to be a fraud. I read it in the paper, so it must be true,” Moriarty lilts. “I _love_ newspapers. Fairy tales, and pretty grim ones too.”

Sherlock’s the one that paces now, striding from Q on one side to Moriarty on the other, taking crisp sharp turns on his heel each time. He stops, staring at Q for a long moment, then turns back to Moriarty.

“I can prove that you created an entirely false identity.”

Moriarty rolls his eyes. 

“Just kill yourself. It’s a lot less effort.” He throws one arm out over the gap. “Go on. For me?”

“Please,” Sherlock managed to inject the word with an incredible amount of disdain. “You’re insane.”

“You’re just getting that now?” Moriarty makes something that might be an astonished half-laugh. “Ok. Let me give you a little extra incentive. Your friends will die if you don’t.”

So that’s his play. Clever, if Sherlock’s attached enough to anyone for it to work. Q’s spying would say that he is. 

“John?”

“Not just John,” Moriarty laughs. “Everyone.”

“Mrs. Hudson?”

“ _Everyone_.”

“Lestrade.”

Q raises an incredulous eyebrow. He knew Sherlock didn’t really like people and that he’s remarkably attached to the landlady who puts up with all his carrying-on and Watson was essentially a given, but DI Lestrade? The man just tried to arrest him yesterday. 

“Three bullets, three gunmen, three victims. There’s no stopping them now unless my people see you jump. You can have me arrested, you can torture me, you can do anything you like with me, but nothing’s going to prevent them from pulling the trigger.” Moriarty affects a mockery of sadness, smile perpetually tugging at the edge of his lips. “Your only three friends in the world will die.”

“Unless I kill myself and complete your story.”

“You’ve got to admit, that’s sexier.”

That must be Eve’s job, then, because _Q_ certainly doesn’t know how to call off Moriarty’s men. Well, men and woman. They didn’t need Eve on overwatch for this. She wouldn’t be able to react quickly enough to prevent Sherlock from shooting Moriarty if he’d come armed, but she has a rifle that she’s pointedly not sighting at Sherlock. They must be expecting Watson, then. That would suit Moriarty’s flair for the dramatic.

“And I die in disgrace.”

“Of course. That’s the _point_ of this.” Moriarty looks over the edge again, taking the half step closer to Sherlock’s side as he does the same. “You’ve an audience now. Off you pop.”

Sherlock looks over at Q, impassivity warring with painful loneliness. They’re strangers, the two of them, and Q doesn’t know if it hurts Sherlock more or less to know that it isn’t really his brother watching him jump to his death. He shakes his head, as tiny as he can make it, hoping Moriarty won’t notice. 

“Go on,” Moriarty says, voice rising in irritation. “I told you how this ends. Your death is the only thing that’s going to call off the killers. _I’m_ certainly not going to do it.”

“Would you give me one moment, please? One moment of privacy. One moment with my brother.” Sherlock’s standing on the ledge now, coat whipping in the breeze, and there really is a crowd gathering across the street of people whispering to themselves, then moving on when nothing happens. “Please.”

“Of course.” Moriarty moves away from the ledge and, in the spirit of chivalry, turns his back. He’s not terribly far away and Q has no doubt that he’ll peek and try to read their lips, but Q can work around that.

“Don’t do it.” Q keeps his voice low, aware of how sharp Moriarty’s ears are. 

“I picked the location. I expected nothing less.” Sherlock’s lips curve in a tiny, private smile. “I have a plan. It’ll hurt, but I’ll survive.”

“Watson’s going to come here, isn’t he? The perfect ultimatum- jump before his eyes or watch as he dies with you unable to help.”

“I expect so.”

Q sighs. “I can potentially- _potentially_ , mind you- call off that sniper. I don’t know if she’s the one responsible for telling the others if you jump, but Moran’s one of the best shots in the world and has a rifle made just to her specifications. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t assigned to kill Watson.”

Sherlock glances at him for a moment, barely controlling the surprise that washes across his features, turning back to gaze over the London skyline so Moriarty can’t read his lips. 

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because I happen to enjoy my day job, as it turns out, and Moriarty’s asking me to take too many risks for my liking. I’m out to protect my own skin first and foremost.”

“What do I need to do?”

“Exactly what you would’ve had I said nothing. Just don’t jump.”

Sherlock stares out over the skyline for a while longer once Q slides away, then turns slowly in place and leaps down from the ledge with more energy than he’s shown this entire time.

“You’re not going to do it,” Moriarty observes, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at Q. He holds his ground, meeting Moriarty’s gaze exactly as unconcerned as the first time they met face to face. The Spider and one of the Four Horsemen of the Internet, both masters of different kinds of webs. 

“So the killers can be called off, then there’s a recall code, or a word, or a number.” That’s certainly what Q’s betting on, but he sees where Sherlock’s going with this. “I don’t have to die, _if I’ve got you_.” He mimics Moriarty’s signature sing-song lilt, pacing a tight circle around him. 

“You think you can make me stop the order? You think you can make me do that?”

“Yes.” Sherlock stops, raising an eyebrow. “So do you.”

“Sherlock, your big brother and _all_ the King’s horses couldn’t make me do a thing I didn’t want to.”

“Yes,” Q says, joining the two of them with a smile, “but you forgot about me.”

The recessed light on the grip flickers to green as his hand closes around it, accepting his palmprint and casting a faint glow across the crisp white of his shirt. Moriarty smiles, wide and manic and delighted as Q draws his weapon in a single smooth motion, pressing it up against the underside of Moriarty’s jaw in a reverse of the week before. 

“You’d do best, _Jim_ ,” he hisses, “to remember I was never one of your marionettes,” and pulls the trigger.

Moriarty drops.

Sherlock jerked back far enough when the gun came out to avoid much more than a scant speckle of blood on the sleeve of his outstretched hand and undoubtedly some in the wool of his coat, but Q’s suit is absolutely ruined and there’s a warm splatter of Moriarty’s blood dripping slowly down his cheek. He wipes the muzzle perfunctorily on Moriarty’s pocket square, careful not to touch him, and returns it to his shoulder holster before plucking his phone out of his pocket with bloody hands. 

“Evie, please don’t shoot me,” he starts, ignoring Sherlock staring between him and Moriarty. “Can you call off the rest of Moriarty’s gunmen?”

“I swear, Quincy, the Double-0s could learn a lesson in unpredictability from you. I presume that was our employer, then, and not a change of plans with Holmes? No, of course not.” Eve sighs heavily and Q hears the telltale click of her taking her rifle apart. “I can, but it’s just burner phones. I don’t know who they are, so if I call it off and then Holmes is miraculously not dead, they undoubtedly have orders to carry out their assassinations retroactively.”

Of course. He can’t say he didn’t expect that from Moriarty, but he certainly hoped differently. He thinks they both did.

“Thanks, Evie. Try not to shoot John Watson, will you?”

“I’ll do my best.”

He hangs up without a pause. They’re still on a timeline, then. Could be worse. 

“You’re going to have to jump.”

Sherlock closes his eyes. “I presumed as much.”

“You have a plan?”

Sherlock cracks one eye open to look at him sidelong. “I always have a plan. How will you get out of here covered in blood like that?”

“I,” Q says, twiddling his phone between his fingers, “am going to phone a friend.”

Sherlock steps up on the ledge again, the two of them watching as a figure dashes out of a cab, headed for the hospital. He reaches back to take Q’s hand, squeezing his fingers tight, leaving a streak of blood across his own palm before he fishes out his own mobile.

“I think I might have to do the same,” he murmurs. “Go, Quintilian. I’d rather not have an audience for this. Do try not to disappear for twenty-five years this time.”

“If you insist,” Q replies equally quietly. “Every once in a while I suppose I can listen to my big brother.”

A smile ghosts across Sherlock’s face as he raises his phone to his ear, there and gone in a heartbeat. 

“You do that.”

Q slides away then, vanishing into St. Bart’s and locking the door on the first staff bathroom he can find. Moriarty’s blood is splashed liberally across one side of his face, the other bearing only the faintest of splatters, and his hair doesn’t seem to have fared much better. His shirt took the worst toll overall, but he’s listened to the Double-0s complain enough to know that from that range, the suit’s done. He runs his hand through his hair and grimaces when it doesn’t come out any cleaner, then picks up his phone again anyways. 

“Bond?” He pauses, unsure how one’s supposed to deal with this. “James, this is horribly awkward but I may or may not be locked in a restroom, covered in blood, and I have no idea how you usually walk out of these things without everyone staring at you.”

 

END OF PART ONE

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's Part One!


	2. Part Two: Priyome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which MI5 gets there first, little siblings are little siblings no matter how long spent apart, and M leaves a message.

_priyome_

(n.) in chess, a simple strategic device that depends on pawn structure

 

***

 

Q hung up the phone and settled back against the wall, ready to wait as long as it took for Bond and Trevelyan to arrive with a change of clothes, a stoic face, and ‘official MI6 business’. 

MI5 arrived first.

 

***

 

They make a dour procession, five black sedans with tinted windows winding through the English countryside. Q stares out the window as the bustle of London gives over to greenery, dragging his palm down the cool glass and leaving a jagged red smear on the pristine surface. They took his phone, his gun, his backup phone, his lockpicks, and three of the four knives he had on his person, leaving him _bored_ above all else. 

He taps his fingers against the glass idly, wondering when the guards will stop watching long enough for him to activate his emergency transmitter. It would be either a great idea or a terrible one. If MI5 has MI6’s full cooperation- in which case M would’ve sent at least two Double-0s to ensure his capture and oversee any interrogation, so he really doubts it- then activating his emergency transmitter won’t do anything for him. It would weaken any bargaining position with MI6 that he’s too useful to get rid of quietly in some unsanctioned government facility. If MI5 hasn’t identified him as the Quartermaster- unlikely- or if they haven’t mentioned any of this to MI6… well, M will muster the forces of MI6 to retrieve him and raise hell on MI5 for infringing upon his people. 

That could be very, very good. 

“Stop it,” Sherlock snaps from the other side of the car, watching Q instead of the scenery outside. “I’m trying to _think_ and you’re not helping _,_ _Sherrinford_.”

Q glares at Sherlock’s reflection and starts tapping out obscenities in Morse code. 

Sherlock groans, burying his head in his hands. 

Somebody brought Sherlock a towel, if not a change of clothes, so there’s only the slightest smear of congealed blood at Sherlock’s temples while Q looks like he just shot a man point blank in the head.

MI5, as it turns out, is rather more judgmental over dead criminal masterminds than MI6. 

Q abandoned his suit jacket as soon as they took his weapons, crumpling it in the footwell so that he doesn’t look nearly as much like Sherlock, who remains half-dressed up in his suit with the first few buttons of his shirt loose. Q looks more like a too-skinny Double-0, he thinks, with his waistcoat and tie splattered with red and his shoulder holster visible, if empty. 

_Sometimes a trigger has to be pulled._

It isn’t the first time Q’s been directly responsible for someone’s death. He’s been carrying a knife since he was eight, a gun since he was thirteen, and he was a part of his first heist turned deadly when he was ten. He’s never wanted to tally up his body count. He’s better off not knowing. And a trigger did have to be pulled, he isn’t questioning that part. James Moriarty had to die for Q to remain free. 

Now he just has to keep it that way.

 

***

 

As prison cells go, Q muses, it could be much worse. 

It’s a nice cage they’re keeping him in, all bulletproof windows overlooking a second-story drop and armed guards keeping watch at all hours because nobody- _nobody_ \- trusts Q with surveillance cameras. He supposes he can understand that. 

So far, they’ve left him alone save for meals in the grand dining room, Sherlock seated at one end of the overly long table and Q at the other, guards watching from the edges of the room the entire time. Sherlock’s taken to following Q after lunch, playing his violin or monologuing at him until dinner each day. 

“Sherrinford, pass the salt.”

Q ignores him. 

Eventually, one of the guards passes Sherlock the salt. Sherlock rolls his eyes. 

“It’s the name on your birth certificate, whether you like it or not.”

“Last I checked, Sherrinford Holmes died twenty-five years ago. One would think that you’d remember that, seeing as you were there.” 

Q stabs his chicken with a little more force than frankly required, narrowing his eyes and wishing the chicken wasn’t quite so good. He can’t make a dramatic exit when the food’s good. He and Daddy had some lean years before they started making good money, years when food was food and waste was abhorrent. 

Sherlock doesn’t have those compunctions. He shoves his plate away with a clatter of silverware scattering across the table, chair screeching across the wood floors as he storms off. The guards bristle, a pair breaking off to follow him and ensure that he doesn’t leave the estate grounds while the other eight stay by Q. 

Sherlock’s obituary came out in today’s paper, accompanied by front-page features on his suicide in every tabloid and half the newspapers, and his funeral is scheduled in three days time. Q walked in on Mycroft Holmes’ PA shouting at Sherlock that he’s not allowed to attend his own damn funeral, does he _want_ to get caught? 

Personally, Q thinks that’s exactly what Sherlock wants. They both know that Q’s perfectly capable of taking over or dismantling Moriarty’s web on a whim, that a few well-placed commands and Sherlock could clear his name and return to his life. Sherlock’s also starting to realize that Q, at the moment, has absolutely no reason other than brotherly affection to do so and that he’s rather lacking in affection for either one of his biological brothers. 

Dinner that night is tense enough that Q abandons his lovely rare steak and lets the guards escort him back to his cell, flopping down on the four-poster bed once they’ve locked him in for the night. They’ve put him in his old room, according to Sherlock, the one that’s always been saved for the poor dead boy instead of turned into a guest room, in what Q can only see as a morbid kind of familial masochism. It’s nice, he supposes, in the way that the entire house is nice, but completely empty and devoid of personality.

His fingers itch for something- spare bits of wire or paints or a keyboard with the entire world at his disposal. Something- _anything_ \- to do. Q’s spent his entire life busy. He worked on forgeries with Daddy in his youth, his attention to detail balancing out the boredom of copying extant things rather than fixing this line here and that edge there. He’s scarcely picked up a paintbrush since he discovered the Internet, but they might let him paint where they’ll never let him have an Internet connection. 

“Quincy,” someone purrs, stepping out of a shadowed corner. Q whips a pillow at his uninvited guest as a distraction, scrambling for the nearby pencil- the closest thing he has to a weapon- before he recognizes James Bond.

“Agent 007.” Q composes himself quickly, glancing down at his suit self-consciously. MI5 provided him with all sorts of shirts and jeans that he promptly removed the trackers from and buried around the gardens like a trail of breadcrumbs, but he’s taken to wearing his bloodstained suit to dinner just to discomfit Sherlock. He can’t quite decide whether the tee and jeans would’ve been better or worse for his official retrieval documentation.

Bond, on the other hand, seems to have traded out his usual sharp suits for a pair of dark jeans and a jumper, leaning against the wall with one hand in his pocket. He holds up a paper bag with his free hand and smiles, eyes scanning over Q in an unsubtle check for injury. 

“I brought dinner.”

“Unconventional rescue, this one.”

“M’s playing a long game.” Bond joins Q on his bed, spreading out a napkin and unpacking some of Q’s favorite foods that he’s managed to smuggle in. “I managed to convince R to give me your coordinates so long as I promised not to either steal you away or be spotted. Hence, dinner.”

The smile that creeps slowly across Q’s face is tiny and satisfied, hidden behind his peanut butter and raspberry jelly sandwich while Bond relays the gossip the Double-0s have gathered in the last week, carefully avoiding any mention of Moriarty, MI5, or Sherlock Holmes.

“James.”

Bond stops at the quiet murmur of his name, sighing. “I’m sorry, Quincy. Orders are orders. All I can tell you is that M is extremely displeased with MI5 over holding his Quartermaster without charges and that he’s threatening to loose nine bored Double-0s on London in retaliation.”

Q laughs quietly, brushing the last crumbs of his sandwich back onto the napkin and tipping over onto his back to stare at the canopy. The Double-0s are notorious for needing handlers when long-term in the country because their tastes in fun tend to be classified into the three Ds: dangerous, destructive, and downright irritating. The last time Border Control gave the Retrieval teams problems, M tasked 006 and 008 with testing security at airports for three months straight. In that time, Trevelyan got himself arrested on five different occasions and promptly broke out four times, Miranda Fletchley smuggled an arsenal in only to hand it over with an apology moments before boarding her plane, and Border Control twitched at the sight of MI6 papers for two months afterwards. 

“I wasn’t going to ask about that,” Q replies, “but thank you for that nightmare. What I was going to say was thank you for dinner, for giving me company while sparing me from my brother’s endless melancholy.”

“Of course,” James answers, brushing a light hand over the splatters of blood long-since darkened to brown, looking distracted. “Anything for my Quartermaster, right?”

Q hums in agreement, oddly disappointed. It’s like they’re strangely at odds- Quincy and Agent 007, the Quartermaster and James, never quite synced up. He’s never had that problem working with Bond before, no matter what Major Boothroyd used to complain about the man being incapable of working with his handlers. 007 is his most frustrating agent, edging out 006 by a hair, but that’s more because he’s too familiar rather than too distant. 

Bond’s hand brushes along the darkest stain, tracing it up along Q’s skin where Moriarty’s blood once dripped hot along the line of his throat, coming to a standstill with two fingers pressed lightly to the pulse point just under his jaw. They sit there for a while, listening to the distant murmur of the patrols in the gardens outside his window and the steady thud of Q’s pulse against Bond’s fingers. 

“Shift change is in fifteen minutes or so,” Bond murmurs. “I ought to be leaving.”

“Don’t bother R too much,” Q warns, leaving his eyes closed. “Her worst nightmare is having to take over as Quartermaster and if I have to pick a new second when I get back, you’ll all get nothing but water pistols and walkie-talkies for months.”

“Understood, _sir_ ,” Bond purrs, shifting Q’s curls back from his forehead and, when Q doesn’t react to the caress, following his hand with the warm brush of his lips. Q cracks one eye open to watch him gather the remnants of their dinner, pausing at the window to survey the gardens before he opens it with a muted squeak. 

“Next time, bring me a cheeseburger.”

“What makes you so sure I’ll be here again?”

Q just smiles. Bond’ll be back. For one, he can’t resist breaking into places where he shouldn’t be. Beyond that, well, he doubts Bond can resist the lure of Q’s secrets all starting to come to the surface. He’s a spy for a reason.

“A cheeseburger, James. No pickles.”

“As you wish, Quincy,” Bond murmurs, slipping out of the window. 

Q gives him ten minutes to get clear, then shuts the window, hand hovering over the lock as he catches a streak of darkness slipping through the hedges. For the first time since he’s been here, he doesn’t lock the window before crawling into bed.

(He does, however, move his purloined collection of silverware and anything else he can use as a weapon closer to his side of the bed. If they figure out what Q’s been up to, he doesn’t think Bond would question using Q’s tentative trust to get close enough to kill him.)

 

***

 

He’s been here for a week on the day the guards escort him directly to the parlor after breakfast. As they normally give him leave to wander the grounds so long as he has a full complement of them following along, it’s not the subtlest summons he’s ever received. 

“Director Holmes,” he greets the man waiting for him. Mycroft’s back is to the parlor door and his PA stands at his side with an armful of files balanced on her hip, her phone out of sight for perhaps the first time Q’s seen. Q pauses just inside the door, ignoring the gentle push of the guards trying to usher him to his seat. “Or should I call you Mycroft?”

“Mycroft will do, Sherrinford,” Mycroft replies without looking, flipping idly through the document in his lap. “Please sit down. Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve been reliably informed that you don’t do well without one.”

“Director Holmes it is, then.” Q ignores the armchair directly across from Mycroft, choosing to perch on the armrest of the couch and force Mycroft to twist to face him. “And no, I think I’ll pass on the tea. I’ve seen how much sugar dear Sherlock puts in his- I loathe to imagine what yours might look like.”

The guards step out at a wave of Mycroft’s hand, his PA following them out at a second, more insistent, wave. They both wait for the click of the door, then another few minutes for the guards to take up their positions and the click of Mycroft’s PA’s heels to recede into the distance. Hunting down Sherlock, Q assumes, for any information he’s picked up about Q from the past week. It’s the only reason that makes sense for Mycroft to have them living together, to put Q in Sherrinford’s room and eat at the dining room table he would’ve grown up at, had he lived. It’s the same reason why the library doors always stand open, beckoning to him with comfortable chairs and dust caught in the light and a collection of books such that Daddy used to rhapsodize about stealing them out from under Mummy’s nose. 

“I see why Sherlock believed your tale,” Mycroft comments, examining Q’s features dispassionately. “As for myself, I ran your DNA three times against a comparison of Mummy’s, mine, and Sherlock’s just to be certain.”

“Fascinating,” Q replies dryly. 

Mycroft sips his tea, waiting for Q to offer up his life story, and Q stares at the piano on the other side of the room and dreams up schematics for an improved tracking system. After an hour of that, Anthea-Alice-Agatha-whatever she’s going by at the moment returns with a stack of papers and a crisp _you have a meeting in half an hour, sir_. 

“I’ll see you this time tomorrow, Sherrinford,” Mycroft says and it’s as clear a dismissal as he’s received from anyone since Olivia Mansfield died not quite at his hands. Q takes one more curious look at Mycroft, then leaves. 

Sherlock wants nothing more than his brother back from the dead. Mycroft seems entirely ambivalent to him. M is using him as some kind of bargaining chip and Q knows that’s exactly the road that turned Tiago Rodriguez into Raoul Silva. He fears what he might become, should M give him up, sacrifice him for a country he barely loves. Moriarty, Silva, they have _nothing_ on the power Pestilence can wield and the destruction at his fingertips if he lacks an anchor. 

Q retreats to his room to think, so lost in his own thoughts that when Bond returns that evening, he leaves a still-warm cheeseburger at Q’s side and disappears back into the night.

 

***

 

Each day, Mycroft offers him tea and then proceeds to ignore him, steadily working on his paperwork until Anthea- Q’s just calling her that from now on, it’s the one she uses most commonly- returns after precisely sixty-three minutes. Some days Q dreams up the things he’d like to build once he has a workshop again, some days he sits in sullen silence, and some days he does a dramatic reading of the paperback romances he found tucked in one corner of the library until Mycroft sets his tea aside for fear of choking on it. Most days, though, most days he sits at the piano bench and plays beautifully when his day is going well and discordantly when Sherlock deduces him over breakfast. 

Bond arrives every evening, slipping in through the window Q never locks anymore with some kind of treat and the latest in MI6 gossip, starting with _I have news from R, Quartermaster mine_ and ending with a kiss as Q falls asleep that’s always slightly longer than the night before. It’s a routine of sorts, if one that leaves Q slowly dying of boredom and plotting increasingly inventive ways to murder Sherlock. 

“Why did you do it, Sherrinford?” Mycroft asks after three weeks of near-silent visits. 

Q stills his hands on the keys with a discordant smash, letting that drift into silence beforelooking up from the piano. Mycroft is watching him this time, the sharp interest in his eyes at odds with his polite, disinterested smile. 

“I’m afraid you’ve forgotten where you are, Director Holmes. Age, I know, can be unfortunate. The markers for Sherrinford and Siger Holmes are in the back gardens. Out this door, to the left, take a right at the end of the hall.” Q’s smile is as patently false as Mycroft’s own. He stands and stretches, leaving the piano bench to sit in the armchair across from Mycroft, and then he waits.

Theirs is a game of patience. Someone has to crack first.

Q doesn’t intend for it to be him.

“What is that awful name you insist on using? Quintilian?” Mycroft raises a single eyebrow in judgement. “Why did you do it, Quintilian?”

“To what are you referring?”

“Let’s start with the murder of James Moriarty.”

“Murder’s an awfully harsh word.”

“What would you call it?”

“I’d call it a service to Queen and Country.”

Mycroft sets aside his paperwork and folds his hands in his lap. “And why were you an associate of Mr. Moriarty in the first place?”

Q just smiles. Mycroft can guess. Money, power, resources, the threat of death, all of the above and none of them at all. The details are unimportant so long as Queen and Country recognize that Q is of far more value alive and at his computer rather than imprisoned or in a shallow grave. And they will, he’s sure of it. The simple fact that without his help, it’ll take years for them to clear Sherlock’s name is proof enough of it. 

“You’ve put me in a difficult position, Quintilian.” Mycroft sighs, standing up and pacing the length of the room. “I can’t release an known associate of James Moriarty’s, especially one with your talents. On the other hand, MI6 has been… rather vehement… about the return of their Quartermaster. So tell me this- if you don’t cooperate, how am I to help you?”

“Somehow, _Mycroft_ ,” Q replies as Anthea enters, signaling the end of today’s visit, “I think you need me more than I need you.”

Mycroft leaves without another word.

 

***

 

Mycroft doesn’t come back the next day or the one after that. Sherlock disappears within the week, his room empty but for the posters on the wall and the old chemistry set gathering dust in the corner. Q rearranges the library alphabetically by the first word in the third chapter in retaliation. If Mycroft didn’t like the answers, he shouldn’t have asked the questions.

Three days, then a week, then two weeks of total isolation save for the ever-present guards and the estate staff, none of whom talk to him save to usher him to meals. 

He almost misses Sherlock’s probing questions.

“James,” he greets the agent fondly when a dark shape slips through the window.

“Sorry,” Trevelyan drawls, stepping out into the light to reveal blond hair and his characteristic smirk. “He’s in… Russia, last I checked, though knowing James he’s a hemisphere away by now. Told me to bring you a cheeseburger, though. No pickles? Shame.”

“Let me guess, you’re under the same orders as 007 is regarding me.”

“No information, no electronics, no being noticed and certainly no breaking you out?” Trevelyan gives him a wicked grin. “M may have forgotten to make that an order.”

Q holds his hand out for the phone before Trevelyan can so much as dangle it in front of him, smile spreading slowly across his face. It’s a burner phone, one of Q’s own design, and it takes him a mere moment to make his choice and toss it back to Trevelyan.

“We’re leaving. I have a point to make.”

Trevelyan grins, pulling a Sharpie out of his back pocket and tumbling it between his fingers, and he takes a pointed look at the unmarked wall where sun-bleached squares mark the places where his childhood belongings once rested. He tore them all down after the first week. 

“James may be MI6’s favorite all-purpose killer, but it’s me you want when it’s time to send a message. Feel like defacing the shrine to who you used to be, Sherrinford?”

Q rolls his eyes at the show of knowledge. He expected as much. Bond and Trevelyan are capable of being discreet, just… not with each other. If any other Double-0 had climbed in his window claiming to be sent by Bond, Q would expect that M has made a decision and sent an assassin. Too dangerous to live or too dangerous to lose- that’s the only two choices MI6 has for dealing with him, and they don’t know the half of it. 

“Call me Quincy,” he says, catching the marker offhandedly and uncapping it with his teeth, pocketing the cap. “An unauthorized rescue and some petty vandalism in the Director of MI5’s house? You’ve earned it.”

“Alec, then.” Trevelyan pads silently behind him to get a better look as he Q writes in the slanted, looping script of his own handwriting rather than the strict block letters he uses on blueprints. “ _When you’re ready to bargain, you know where I’ll be._ Not quite lighting three Lamborghinis on fire and sleeping with both the target’s wife and his mistress, but I suppose to the Director of MI5 your escape is about as bad. Still. If you want to light something on fire, I brought a lighter.”

Q tosses the Sharpie back to Alec with a final flourish, signing his message as Quintilian as a final insult. Sherlock and Mycroft can call him whatever they want, it won’t change the fact that Sherrinford Holmes is long dead. 

Not that they particularly care. Six weeks since he shot Moriarty, six weeks since MI5 got to him before MI6 could, most of which has been spent in daily contact with either Sherlock, Mycroft, or both. In all that time calling him Sherrinford and calling him brother, they never once asked about Daddy. 

“Ready, Quincy?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

 

***

 

M doesn’t mention 006’s unauthorized rescue.

Q doesn’t mention leaving him to MI5’s tender embrace for six weeks, but he leaves a virus just nasty enough to be punishment while being something that, theoretically, could’ve come from someone besides Q. Questioning how something got through Q’s firewall would require acknowledging his absence, so M works in pen and paper until Eve takes pity and asks Q for help. 

James and Alec, who continue to appear in his flat at random intervals- to defend him from MI5’s greedy clutches, according to Alec, and because somebody has to feed him, according to James- find the whole thing entirely too amusing. Every evening, Q finds himself tossing pillows and blankets at their heads before he retires to his own room, and every morning he finds them neatly folded on the couch and no agents in sight. 

It’s like those first weeks when Bond was stalking him all over again. The criminal world is quiet, shaking in the wake of Moriarty’s disappearance and the breakdown of communication from anybody in the Spider’s upper echelon. He’s sorely tempted to stir up some trouble just to stop the hovering. 

It’s not like he’s in hiding. He’s living in his own flat, going to work, and when he can ditch his shadows he even goes to his favorite restaurants. Mycroft knows exactly where to find him, should he care to. 

He just doesn’t care.

For now.

 

***

 

“One moment, 004, this is rather delicate.”

Mary Morstan glances around Q’s workspace in the lazy way spies have that means she’s memorizing everything without looking like she’s memorizing anything. It’s messier than it used to be, now that he’s not worried about having to pack up and run at any given moment, though the number of concealed weapons has only increased since James started spending his down time between training sessions here. Tanner and Eve shut the door behind themselves, blocking out the hubbub of R handling 008’s mission while the rest of the Branch scrambles to find 001 before the four assassins on her trail do. 

Tanner shifts a pile of paperwork Q hasn’t gotten to yet to clear his favorite spot along the back wall, taking a cookie from the unmarked container Q keeps there. Eve perches on the edge of Q’s desk, watching him fiddle with the insides of one of his palmprint weapons to fix an issue with the weight. James, pretending to nap on the couch, cracks one blue eye open to watch Morstan find a place to stand as she slips smoothly from a stillness of a soldier’s stance to the constant shifting of a civilian and back again. 

“Miss Morstan,” James greets her, abandoning his pretense of napping while still sprawled lazily across Q’s office couch. It’s the most well-armed area of his office exactly because of how often one of them naps there. 

“Bond.”

James smiles and relaxes, unimpressed. He tends to put more value on the ability to cause enormous amounts of destruction rather quickly- hence why he and Alec Trevelyan get along so well- and to undervalue the quieter side of espionage. Mary Morstan, for all that she’s a crack shot and ruthless to boot, has cultivated the art of being underestimated. Q reassembles his gun quickly, watching the recessed light turn a rewarding green at his touch and then flick immediately to red when he hands it to Eve. 

Perfect.

He takes it back as the light flicks to green, wiping it clean of his fingerprints and setting it in one of his hard-sided equipment cases alongside the requisite radio for 003. Other technicians maintain all the rest of MI6’s equipment, but Q’s not giving up the secret to these yet. 

“004, what brings you here today?”

“Change in her personnel file,” Tanner replies, holding the file out. Q looks at it, half his office away, and doesn’t move to fetch it. “Agent 004 has been authorized for quarters outside of MI6. As her skill set is specialized, 004 also requires a complete cover life to keep her hidden until such time as MI6 has need of her.”

Q groans, burying his face in his hands. Setting up simple cover identities is one thing- almost everyone in Q Branch has the talent in forgery to do so and half of them have the talent to do so for the Double-0s. Setting up long-term identities for undercover missions is another thing, requiring something that can shape to the mission’s needs without cracking under examination. This, though, is something he’s only had to do a few times: 002, 008, and 009 have this kind of identity and he’s built himself several of them, including Quentyn Harrison, his preferred identity these days. It’s extremely tedious work.

“Alright. Eve, if you have a list of M’s requirements then Tanner can return 004’s file to its nonexistence. 004, get comfortable. This will take far longer than any of us will like if I’m to do it properly.”

“And 007?” she asks, shifting the pile of miscellaneous prototypes that need his approval to clear the visitor’s chair while Eve and Tanner confer over their list. 

“007 does as he pleases,” Q replies offhand, graciously accepting the list and less than graciously accepting Eve’s ruffle of his curls as she and Tanner leave. “I’ve long since learned that asking him to do anything is the surest way to have the exact opposite happen, though if 007 could be bothered to acknowledge that we all know he’s awake, I’d appreciate a sandwich.”

James tips his head back to look at him, eyes bright and amused, then shakes his head. Q rolls his eyes. He’s surprised James didn’t offer to send Alec for food- he’s certainly not leaving Q alone with Mary Morstan, but he also believes Q doesn’t eat enough. James believes in loyalty- to Queen and Country, to MI6, to his Quartermaster and to Quincy himself- so he doesn’t quite approve of Morstan’s rogue period and he doesn’t quite trust her.

Q, on the other hand, thinks Mary Morstan might be just what he needs. Someone uncorrupted by Mycroft’s influence, someone not particularly attached to Queen and Country who might be willing to help him control the game. 

“Tell me, 004,” he says, leaning forward on his elbows, “what civilian job can I hide you away in?”

“When I was a little girl,” she replies, smiling sweetly, “I always did want to be a nurse.”

 

***

 

Occasionally, Q drops leads to Sherlock about the more irritating members of Moriarty’s web, always obscured such that nobody but Mycroft can prove it didn’t come from Mycroft, and even that wouldn’t stand up in court. 

It works to his favor, after all, dealing with nuisances too small for him to send a Double-0 after. And if he sends 006 to Russia at about the same time Sherlock has gotten himself in a pinch of trouble, well, it keeps Mycroft away. 

He falls asleep at his desk long after Trevelyan’s reported in, searching CCTV footage for a glimpse of Sherlock, and wakes in his own bed with coffee brewing in his kitchen and James dozing in Q’s favorite chair.

“Wake up,” he murmurs, considering James for merely a moment before sliding into his lap to murmur it slightly louder. James startles awake, reaching for the closest gun blearily and pressing it to the underside of Q’s jaw. 

“I could’ve shot you,” James chastises him. “And then where would we be?”

“In the exact same position, but slightly more awkward about it,” Q answers, tipping the gun away from them both to reveal the light shining red. “You slept with your own sidearm, but reached for one of mine when I surprised you despite the fact that you know you can’t shoot them.” He smiles, sliding it from James’ grasp and sliding his own hand into position until the light flicks green, then returns it to its hiding place. 

“Only you and I know that.” James shrugs. “And I have no desire to shoot you, Quincy.”

Q kisses him for that, draping his arms around James’ shoulders and twisting to straddle his lap. James lets him control this kiss, this little moment stolen away from their responsibilities, and slips his hands around to rest onQ’s narrow hips. He groans his displeasure when Q pulls away, breaking James’ hold with barely a moment’s resistance and standing just out of easy reach. 

“Why don’t you, though?” Q glances down at his bare feet self-consciously. He’s never been good with the emotional stuff. Casualty of growing up on the run with a world-class liar and thief as his only companion. “You know who I am, you have an inkling of what I’ve done. You, perhaps better than anyone living, know what I’m capable of and how the others ended up dead.”

“You told me that first day. As much damage as I can cause in a year in the field, was it?” James sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “MI6 likes dangerous toys. All the handlers they give us are competent, reasonable people with clever toys. Those come a dime a dozen. The ones we listen to- Mansfield, Tanner, you- they’re the ones more dangerous than we are.”

Q laughs, the sound short, sharp, and cold, then collapses bonelessly into the couch. James makes a small, aborted motion to go to him, deciding better of it at the last minute. Q doesn’t know whether he ought to be disappointed or not. 

He’s dangerous.

That’s why they all like him. Moriarty wanted one of the most talented hackers in the world and only Pestilence would do because he wanted poor, dead Sherrinford Holmes, too. MI6 wanted the talented boy with the obviously scrubbed past who they could turn into a weapon against their enemies and now, MI5 wants the same thing. 

“You’re clever, 007,” he snaps, watching James recoil at the use of his callsign. “Wasn’t that your precious M’s constant complaint about you? Look at 007, he’s too bloody smart for his own good or for ours. Use your head. Do you think MI5 detains just any executive-level intelligence worker for six weeks without charge?”

James leans back, the warmth Q’s grown so terribly used to draining from his expression until Agent 007 stares back at him, then stands and strides to the kitchen without ever quite taking his eyes off Q. 

“If we’re doing this now, I need a drink.” 007 toasts Q from across the kitchen counter with a wry smile, draining the glass and slamming it back to the countertop without bothering to put the top back on the bottle. “Or two.”

It’s a long moment before 007 returns to the chair, bottle dangling from between his fingers, swirling his drink like he’ll find the answers in its amber depths. 

“You were an associate of Moriarty’s, which makes leaving you in MI6 equally as threatening as removing you. The entirety of Q Branch could go through everything you’ve worked on and check for secrets without finding anything except what you wanted them to.”

“Careful. That’s almost complimentary.”

“When plied with enough alcohol, R says she suspects you might’ve been one of the Four Horsemen. Felix Leiter’s division’s been hunting for War after a major information leak and he says they’re invisible entirely because they have no affiliations, that they’ll work for anyone for the right price.” 007 pauses, searching for a reaction that isn’t coming, then takes a too-large sip of his drink. “You’ve had every opportunity to let top agents die, to destroy MI6 from the inside out, to cause England to fall. Instead, you’ve shored up weaknesses nobody knew existed in our systems, proved yourself fully capable of destroying systems from the outside, and led MI6 to one of the most successful years in recent history.”

Q meets 007 stare for stare. He isn’t warm in the slightest, assessing a threat rather than regarding… a friend, perhaps. Q counts his friends on one hand- Famine, on the rare occasions that they’ve been in one place rather than choosing a quarter of the world and staying there. Eve’s either a friend or biding her time to take him down, either of which he could conceivably see as true. Perhaps he was a fool to count James Bond among them. He wouldn’t be the first to do so and pay with his life and he certainly won’t be the last.

He closes his eyes, banishing the ghost of affection he can almost see clinging to 007’s features, and when he opens them he slips into Pestilence’s disinterested regard for the world.

“I blew up MI6,” he admits, letting a brief smile flicker across his features. “I killed the Quartermaster for his position. I released Raoul Silva from MI6 custody and led him to you before you were ready. I fed information to Moriarty and hid his agents from the eyes of MI5 and MI6 because he paid me and paid me well for it. Run, run, as fast as you can, 007, because I build your weapons and I run your missions and if you became a nuisance, I’d just… let you die.”

It’d be easy. He could take a moment too long breaking through electronic security so that 007 sets off alarms instead of waltzing in unnoticed, he could forget to turn a camera just enough to leave a blind spot, he could change a single comma in the code such that 007’s gun locks him out. Agents entrust their lives to their handlers enough that with enough accidental slips, even the immortal James Bond would succumb with none the wiser. 

“Is that it?”

“I just admitted to treason. I’d say that’s it.”

An amused smile- a genuine one- breaks through the facade of 007, shattering it. He raises both hands, palms out, leaving the one in the air as he reaches into his jacket. Q levels a Taser at him entirely because he doesn’t want to deal with the paperwork if he kills a Double-0 in his flat. Bond keeps his eyes trained on Q’s, drawing a flash drive out of his pocket and tossing it lightly in Q’s direction. 

“Part of M’s final gift to me, apart from that abominable statuette.” He shrugs, draining his glass one final time and taking glass and bottle back to the kitchen. “Two videos, one dated before Eve shot me and one dated the day after the explosion. You might find them interesting, Quincy.”

Bond hums while he prepares lunch, just like he always does, leaving Q to his work. He has a deft hand with a knife but his prep work looks almost slow today, a lazy dicing of vegetables as he starts working on some kind of soup. Q watches him for a moment before retrieving his laptop and taking the appropriate precautions. He doubts Bond would attempt to use a computer virus against his Quartermaster- he’s not that foolish- but he didn’t become the best by making stupid mistakes. 

He plugs in his headphones and clicks on the first video, remaining impassive as M fills his screen, looking older than he ever remembers her being and weary.

 

***

 

_If you’re seeing this, Bond, then it means I have been murdered._

_Clearly, that isn’t exactly unexpected. M, our histories show, makes it to retirement even less frequently than our Double 0s and much less frequently than our Quartermasters. Many of my predecessors have taken their secrets to the grave to the detriment of MI6, as my predecessor’s secrets came back to haunt me._

_I have no intentions of allowing my secrets to threaten everything I’ve worked so hard to build. The others are either incapable of doing what needs to be done or too obedient to step outside of the rules to do so. You, 007, are as capable as you are irresponsibly disobedient when it suits your purposes. Now, your purposes will suit mine._

_Find a man called Sciarra. Kill him. Don’t miss the funeral._

_That’s the part you’ll like, the hunting down of a target who keeps his activities buried deep enough that even I can’t send an assassin after him. The next part is equally important, but much less the kind of thing you enjoy._

_There’s a boy- no, a man, though I’ll always think of him as a lost boy- a man in Q Branch who I need you to watch. He’s bound to be Quartermaster some day if we can hold onto him and he’ll be the best and the brightest MI6 has ever seen. He’s also not who he says he is. I’ve turned a blind eye to that for years now. If Violet Holmes is arrested for my murder, you can rest assured that this is the reason why, but that’s beside the point._

_Watch him, protect him, and above all, keep him away from the Director of MI5. Bringing Mycroft Holmes into MI6’s affairs, particularly in this case, won’t end well for any of us._

_The name on his papers is Quentyn Harrison, but I knew his mother. Best damn Double-0 I’ve ever seen, and that includes you. More to the point, I knew him before the tragedy, and that boy couldn’t look more like his brothers if he tried._

_Protect him, James, but don’t trust him._

_It is, as I have often believed, the height of folly to trust a Holmes._

 

***

 

_She knew_.

Q shudders, trying not to dwell on the barbed sort of affection M had for Bond, no matter how they’d both deny it. He’s less successful at avoiding the clear affection she held for Mummy. Mansfield’s friendship with Violet Holmes when they were M’s right hand woman and 001 is well known. It’s half the reason Mycroft is able to use MI6’s assets as MI5 requires. 

She knew, and she didn’t out him to Mummy. She made plans to protect him from Mycroft in the case of her death when he thought she was unaware of his existence. 

In the kitchen, Bond’s knife stills for a long moment before he busies himself again, leaving Q to his privacy. Q wipes the tear from the corner of his eye before it has time to escape and clicks on the second video.

 

***

 

_My secrets, as it seems, are not content to wait for me to die before attempting to destroy all that I have built._

_Twenty three dead in an explosion that nearly decimated our building at Vauxhall Cross, fifteen of them from Q Branch, including Boothroyd, his second in command, and every single person Boothroyd had shortlisted to replace him. Unsurprising that you’d resurface after that, you damn immortal bastard. Mallory will have my head over this, if nothing else, and that means someone has to know my secrets._

_I doubt I will survive long on the outside, out of sheer boredom if nothing else._

_I asked you to watch over Quentyn Harrison not out of sentimentality, out of some misbegotten affection for my oldest and dearest friend, or even now because he’s too young for the responsibilities I’ve burdened him with. Mallory is right to object to his promotion, and for more reasons than he knows._

_He’s too young._

_His record is too clean._

_He’s horribly underutilized in a specialized field and I’m about to bog him down in rebuilding Q Branch, which I admit to considering entirely his due for blowing it up in the first place._

_I don’t hold it against him. Much. Twenty-three dead, but with an explosion that size it’s a miracle it wasn’t more. As your continued survival is the only miracle I continue to believe in, I see it more as well-planned to weaken the structural stability of the building and hit selected targets without decimating MI6. A major blow, but not a grave one. So go ahead, call me blinded by my own sentimentality or whatever accusation you prefer, but remember this. Sometimes we have to compromise our morals for the good of the world and trust me, having Sherrinford Holmes on our side is for the good of the world._

_You’re going to hate him, though. It’s a Holmes trait, I swear, to be so completely insufferable that we mere mortals can’t help but love them anyways._

_This is going to be an utter disaster, I just know it._

 

***

 

Q shoves his laptop away and rips out his headphones as M smiles sadly at something off camera and the image goes still. 

He should be dead. 

He should be dead or imprisoned somewhere where wifi is as good as science fiction and escape is a physical impossibility, not Quartermaster of MI6 with a sky-high security clearance. He got so wrapped up in Moriarty’s game that he completely missed Mansfield watching him from the beginning, even congratulated himself on going unnoticed by Violet Holmes’ best friend.

He was so _blind_. 

“You knew,” he accuses, whirling on Bond. “You lied to get close to me because you knew who I was. What do you _want_ from me, Bond?”

“Nothing you aren’t willing to give.” There’s a splash just before Bond appears at the corner, leaning on the wall and drying his hands on a kitchen towel. “I received this in a biometrically sealed box a few weeks ago when the last of her MI6 assets were declassified.”

“The week when you swapped missions with Alec at the last minute.” It hadn’t made sense. The swap gave Alec an extra week of working with rookie agents which is normally something all the other Double-0s conspire to avoid as often as possible. If he had just seen these… well, the first one was more of a surprise to Q, but Bond would’ve already known more than what Mansfield was admitting to. The second one is damning enough that Q’s surprised Bond didn’t murder him immediately, let alone come back from Brazil with souvenirs and an apologetic kiss when he found Q sleeping in his office. “I don’t understand.”

“I spoke to the other Double-0s. We all know you’re hiding things- I didn’t tell them what- but all of us decided we’re entirely loyal to you anyways. You’ve saved our collective lives a hundred times over and we’ve all seen the long nights and injuries that come from doing so.” Bond shrugs, tossing the towel behind him towards the sink. “I give Queen and Country my life and my loyalty, I kill for her and I lie for her and I’d do far more than that if it was asked of me. Mansfield trusted that you could do the same. Who am I to disagree?”

“You kissed me instead of killing me because Olivia Mansfield was _sentimental_?”

Bond pads barefoot across the distance between them, tipping Q’s face up so he can kiss him gently, tentatively, almost chastely. He keeps Q’s face cradled between his hands when he pulls back, looking at Q with depths of unspoken affection in those blue eyes before leaning their foreheads together. 

“I didn’t kill you because Olivia Mansfield trusted you, Quincy,” he whispers. “I kissed you because for once, I wanted to be selfish and put myself before England.”

“You’re always selfish,” Q grumbles, kissing him again.

“Mmm,” James acquiesces, tugging Q to his feet and smoothing his free hand down the curve of Q’s spine. “If selfish gets me this, then why would I ever stop choosing it?”

Q ignores the question in favor of pushing James’ jacket off his shoulders and setting to work on his shoulder holster- and who _sleeps_ in a _shoulder holster_ , that’s a terrible idea and incredibly uncomfortable, too- until James makes a noise of frustration and lifts him off his feet. Q squawks indignantly, flailing until he can get his legs around James’ hips, and buries his face in the crook of James’ shoulder when his cheeks flame red. 

“The lovely thing about soup,” James purrs in his ear, “is that it can wait. Let me drag you to bed?”

“You should’ve just stayed with me last night.”

It’s a rushed offer, one that he’s not sure this is the right time to voice, given the ‘by the way I might be a traitor’ and ‘by the way I might know but not care’ twist to their morning. He’s entirely off-kilter and more than a little confused by the whole affair. But- and that’s the crucial piece, _but_ \- for all that he wants to hide away until he kind of sort of maybe understands what this means for him and for all his games, there’s nothing that could tear him away from the addictive smooth of James’ hands over his skin and the slow drag of his lips right now. 

“You were asleep. I didn’t want to presume.”

Q glances up at him, seeing the quiet fear of rejection that James won’t voice aloud, and presses a kiss to the sharp line of his jaw. Theirs is perhaps a partnership of things left unsaid, where James’ honeyed words and Q’s rapier wit doesn’t quite cover the unfamiliar emotional ground they find themselves in. 

Give and take, he’s been told, is the key to any kind of relationship. Q is admittedly better at the latter. He can work on that.

“In the future,” Q murmurs, “you should.”

“In the future,” James replies, kicking the door shut behind them, “maybe I will.”

 

***

 

Clever, but not clever enough.

It’s the story of Q’s life, but he’s always found it far more enjoyable when he can apply it to other people. Tracking down the villainous henchmen of the week is much less fun when they all have Facebook pages with locations tagged in their photos. He vastly prefers hunting through shadowy financial records and asking just the right questions to contacts on the wrong side of the law, trading favors MI6 would rather not know about and occasionally dropping pointed threats that he has either Double-0s or Eve Moran at his beck and call. 

It’s interesting, the ones who are more afraid of the Double-0s than of Eve Moran. The Double-0s have the full resources of MI6 behind them, but they tend to require proof beyond Q’s word before they assassinate someone. They’re the bogeyman in the light for those who live in the shadows, the threat of exposure and imprisonment hanging over careless criminals. Those who fear the Double-0s the most are the ones who know Moran simply as one of the weapons wielded by the spectre in the shadows, or perhaps as the black widow of the Spider’s web. Only Moriarty’s people and their associates know to fear Moran and the elusive hacker who claims her loyalty as if it were a given. 

Marco Sciarra falls somewhere in the middle. His associates fear the destructive intrusion of the Double-0s, though he himself is untouchable, and he knows enough of Moran and Moriarty’s pet hacker to take special precautions with his Internet presence. Unfortunately for his life expectancy, he contracted Famine to do the job.

Not, in Q’s opinion, the cleverest idea when attempting to avoid Pestilence. The Four Horsemen- save for War, but Thor’s a bit of an asshole anyways- tend to help each other whenever possible. 

**_Limos:_** _Can’t send you everything. His boss has all three of us employed, but Thor spends more time checking mine and Thanatos’ work rather than doing his own._

**_Limos:_** _Sorry._

Q glances down at his lap before responding, typing slowly as not to wake James. He’s slept here every night he’s been in the country for the last month, including one time he crawled in at three in the morning still smelling faintly like fire and Q tried to suffocate him with a pillow. 

It’s a work in progress.

**_Reseph:_** _Location?_

**_Reseph:_** _Or schedule, that’s all I need._

He glances at his side again, watching the steady rise and fall of James’ chest while he waits for her reply. James has one arm thrown possessively over Q’s stomach, breath tickling his hipbone while Q works on his laptop. He sleeps like the dead when he’s in the country, catching up for the scant hours he gets while on mission, but wakes the moment Q slides out of bed. This is the best compromise they’ve found so far.

His computer beeps quietly, drawing his attention away from James briefly.

**_Limos:_** _Mexico City, Day of the Dead. That’s from Than, so you owe us both a favor now._

**_Reseph:_** _Thanatos owes me a favor from Cuzco three years ago, so we’re square._

**_[THANATOS has joined the conversation]_**

**_Thanatos:_** _I covered for the Stalingrad job when you vanished last year._

**_Thanatos:_** _We are so not square._

Q sighs. He forgot about Stalingrad. It was a tiny job, one he took to keep Thor from accusing him of going honest and to refresh some contacts in the area, but when MI5 took him into custody he figured the Stalingrad job just went undone. They were to pay upon completion, so he was more worried about keeping Mycroft off his back than finding out whether he was officially blacklisted in that part of the world. Again. 

The good thing about being Pestilence is that blacklisting him never lasts terribly long. 

**_Reseph:_** _Fair enough. There are worse people to owe favors to._

**_Limos:_** _Like Thor?_

**_Reseph:_** _Exactly like Thor._

Q shudders. He owed Thor a favor once, back before Moriarty ever found him, and Thor held it over his head without ever quite calling it in for _months_. It was the heart of the split in the Four Horsemen, occurring just after they became famous enough as a group that they couldn’t just kick him out. With a little luck, he’ll irritate someone a little more trigger-happy than the three of them and they’ll have to find a new War. 

**_Reseph:_** _Any idea what Sciarra’s doing there?_

**_Thanatos:_** _No better day than the Day of the Dead for making people dead._

**_Limos:_** _Than thinks he’s funny._

**_Thanatos:_** _No, Thor thinks he’s funny. I overheard that in Mozambique while doing recon for the big boss._

**_Thanatos:_** _Who, by the way, would love to bring you on board personally now that Moriarty’s dead. Bit of a collector, that one, and it rankles that he can’t have the full set._

Q hesitates over the keyboard. On one hand, he hates freelancing. There’s so much more potential to end up with jobs he hates and he has to deal with the inanities of clients who think their identities are oh so secret from him. He doesn’t want to completely retreat from the criminal underworld- he has contacts there that help keep his agents alive and he’s grown rather attached to the extra cushion in his various offshore bank accounts. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to be involved with people who even Moriarty avoided whenever possible. 

**_Reseph:_** _Afraid I’m a little busy dealing with the mosquitos the Spider left behind._

**_Reseph:_** _But I’ll keep it in mind._

**_Limos:_** _Too busy pretending to be reformed?_

**_Reseph:_** _Limos, they wouldn’t like me nearly as much if I was pretending to be reformed._

**_Limos:_** _Ooooh, Pestilence has himself some teeth! I like it!_

**_Thanatos:_** _Back to business, you two. We still on for dinner next month?_

“Should I be jealous?”

Q jerks in surprise, James catching his elbow before it can crack down on him and easing it back to Q’s side. Neither of them deals terribly well with surprise, which has led to a few awkward bruises and a lot of practice deflecting surprised strikes. 

“I didn’t know you were awake.”

“I guessed.” James slides up to press his lips against Q’s, tugging him over to sprawl on James’ chest. “Unfinished messaging interface, secret codenames… and here I thought I was special. Friends of yours?”

“Some of the oldest.” Q turns his laptop to face the both of them, typing quickly. It’s somewhat awkward to be in contact with known criminals with his MI6… he doesn’t know what they are, but it’s a thing and it’s currently awkward. 

**_Reseph:_** _My turn to pick the locale, Limos to pick the restaurant, Thanatos to pay?_

**_Thanatos:_** _Unfortunately._

**_Reseph:_** _Kremlin servers, the file on Quantum, 0300 GMT on the first of the month._

**_Limos:_** _I wanted the Kremlin!_

**_Limos:_** _Since Reseph is no fun at all, I’ll leave the details in the MI5 files on the Spider at 0300 GMT the next day._

**_[LIMOS has left the conversation]_**

**_Reseph:_** _That might not be the best idea_

**_[THANATOS has left the conversation]_**

“Damn it.”

Mycroft’s probably watching any files having to do with Q only too closely right now, which makes peeking at any files having to do with Moriarty a Bad Thing and makes peeking at MI5’s files a Very Bad Thing. He’ll have to leave some kind of warning in the Kremlin files. 

“Unconventional way to set up dinner plans.”

“Unconventional friends.” Q shrugs, closing out the program and running a final virus sweep just in case Famine or Death tried to pull something. He trusts them, but only so far. “Sometimes there are benefits to having unconventional friends, though.”

James hums a query lazily, fingers working steadily through Q’s hair and down to massage the tension from his neck and shoulders. 

“I found Marco Sciarra.”

James freezes, then smooths his hands across the worn cotton of Q’s tee, following the line of his spine down his back and finally wrapping his arms around Q’s stomach.

“I didn’t ask you to hunt him down for me.”

“I’m the Quartermaster, James. It’s my job to be three steps ahead of what you need.” He tips his head back to rest on James’ shoulder, staring at the ceiling and the glimpse of blond hair and tan skin in his peripheral vision. “Besides, this is important to you. I can’t help you through official channels, but I can do something through unofficial ones.”

James is silent for a while, one hand pressed to Q’s heart and the other arm wrapped firmly around his waist. Q gives him time to think it over. It won’t change anything if James still wants him uninvolved- he’ll still leave cutting edge prototypes keyed to James’ biometrics around his apartment ‘just in case someone breaks in’ and he’ll still do his best to keep him safe from a distance, but he’d rather not have to play the games about it.

Well, more games. He’s going to have to pretend he knows absolutely nothing if M asks and less than nothing if Mycroft gets involved. Which is fine. 

Completely fine. 

He’s just… not going to think about it yet. 

“Thank you,” James murmurs, lips pressed to Q’s throat. “So tell me, Quincy, where am I dying to visit on my well-deserved holiday?”

“Mexico City,” Q answers in not quite a gasp, setting his laptop on the side table as James’ hands start to wander. “Day of the Dead.”

“Perfect.”

 

END OF PART TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew. Long chapters are satisfying, but also exhausting. As always, come talk to me if you have questions, or comments, or you're bored, or anything, really. Talking about my writing makes my day, it really does. 
> 
> On a less exciting note, Part Three might take a little longer since I start my full-time grownup job next week, but fear not! There's not a chance I'm abandoning Zwischenzug, I'm just going to be busy. 
> 
> <3 Thanks for your patience! <3


	3. Zugzwang

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry about how long this last chapter took- I got a full time job, so my writing time suddenly took a major hit. Thanks for sticking with me!

_zugzwang_

(n.) in chess, a situation in which a player is limited to moves that cost pieces or have a damaging positional effect

 

***

 

Gareth Mallory is, above all, a practical man. 

It makes him, in Q’s estimation, terribly effective at his job. M can politick with the best of them, promising just enough without ever overreaching himself and deftly navigating the treacherous waters between Parliament’s ideals and MI6’s reality. His tenure has thus far been marked by plausible deniability- what he doesn’t know, he doesn’t have to hide from their MI5 or Parliament. 

It makes his tenure eminently suited to working with Q. M does what he must to keep them funded and Q does what he must to bring his agents back alive. A kind of non-interference pact, if he cares to put it that way, or at the very least a blind eye turned to Q’s domain. 

Which makes the urgent summons to M’s office all the more out of the ordinary, especially when delivered by Double-0. They make admittedly ornery couriers, so much that it’s usually far more efficient- and less a pain for everyone involved- for Tanner or Eve to run important messages. 

This one comes delivered not just by 001, but also by the team of wannabe Double-0s stalking him through the halls. 001’s benched for the moment- a broken arm, three broken ribs, and twenty-seven stitches will do that- and if the three rookies can manage not to lose track of him for a week, they’ll be considered for admission to the Double-0 candidate pool. It’s an idea of Eve’s that has endeared her to Medical, HR, and anyone with a camera and a death wish and has done exactly the opposite for her relations with the Double-0s. 

“001,” Q greets the agent, ignoring the rookies as they give him a suspicious once over. Handling all nine Double-0s personally means that he doesn’t have the time nor the inclination to deal with any of the others. He’s not entirely certain that they know who he is.

“Quartermaster.” 001 watches with some amusement as the rookies realize whose office they’re skulking in. “M requires your presence immediately.”

Q glances down at his screen, where he’s been reviewing 004’s monthly report on the status of her cover identity while buying a variety of train tickets under half of James’ preferred identities and a few of his own. He keeps the few aliases rather more active, pretending he’s globetrotting like his fellow Horsemen instead of ensconced in one country. 

“I’m busy.”

“M was insistent. Director Holmes of MI5 is supposed to arrive any minute.”

“ _Was_ supposed to arrive any minute,” one of the rookies corrects. “Then you took several unsuccessful detours to try and lose us and stopped for lunch.”

Shit. 

Q squeezes his eyes shut. This is great. _Great_. He’s going to kill Mycroft if he thinks that just because Sherlock is away, he can meddle in Q’s life instead. It’s almost certainly Mycroft’s doing- M prefers to hold meetings alone and debrief them on what they need to know later, not drag them unprepared into meetings with the Director of MI5. 

And now he’s late. 

_Fantastic._

“That’ll be all, 001,” he dismisses the agent, shutting down his computer and swiping a palm over the pad near the door to lock his office down. He doesn’t _quite_ rush, since it won’t do him any good to seem bothered by the summons, but it’s a near thing. 

“You’re late, Q,” M says sharply when Q enters his office, locking it down into privacy mode absentmindedly before he sits down. M has his hands steepled in front of him, weary and unimposing in the way all good spies who survive past their field years are, while Mycroft smilesserenely and leans forward on his umbrella. “I don’t believe I have to introduce the Director of MI5, no?”

“You do not,” Q says, giving Mycroft a cursory nod. “Always a pleasure, Director Holmes.”

“Lovely to see you too, Quintilian.”

“Enough with the pleasantries.” M slaps his hand down on a dark file with _CLASSIFIED_ embossed in red across the front- not MI6 issue, Mansfield wouldn’t stand for that kind of flamboyance and M’s shown no inklings of changing the official position now. Mycroft’s, then. “This goes against protocol, Director Holmes, both yours and mine, so don’t assume that I’m willing to play your games right now. What exactly is the meaning of this?”

Mycroft’s slick politician’s smile doesn’t fade, but his hands tighten infinitesimally on the handle of his umbrella. He misjudged M, then. Q did much of the same at first- he was supposed to be less fearsome than M, less perceptive, the idealistic politician who wouldn’t be able to cope with the dichotomy of Q’s loyalty. 

That’s not what he found. 

He’s finding himself oddly compelled to _respect_ the man, and he made it a point years ago never to respect people who use default ringtones and Internet Explorer. 

“A gift,” Mycroft says, turning his chilly smile on Q instead, “since you seem to have an issue with… losing your weapons of mass destruction. Where is the good Mr. Bond, I wonder?”

“Vienna, according to our trackers, and anywhere but Vienna, according to Retrieval One.”

“Precisely.” Mycroft holds a hand out for the file. There’s a drawn-out moment where M stares incredulously at Mycroft and he smiles back, leaving his hand out between them. Eventually, Q shakes his head and yanks the file out from under M’s hand, passing it to Mycroft’s other side such that he has to switch hands to take it. 

Petty, perhaps, but he’s never been above petty. It’s immensely satisfying to be petty. 

“This,” Mycroft intones with an irritated glance at him, “is one step shy of being the perfect tracker. No more losing agents, no more losing prisoners. You can track location, vital signs… I hazard that those would be rather useful to those of us who do fieldwork.”

“Why isn’t this MI5 standard, then?”

“Unfortunately, we lost the asset responsible for this before she could finish her work.” Mycroft turns his smile on Q. “That’s why I asked for you to be here.”

“MI5 doesn’t give up its research easily,” M states, leaning back in his chair with an unimpressed frown, “even unfinished research. What do you want for it?”

“Nothing much.” Mycroft hands the file back, sliding it across M’s desk agonizingly slowly. “I just want access to the final product for MI5’s use… and, of course, I want dearest Quintilian here tagged.”

“My Quartermaster.”

“Your internationally renowned criminal- arguably a domestic terrorist- that MI5 is kindly permitting you to keep so long as he’s surveilled. Recent events have shown that MI6 is perhaps more careless than MI5 cares for about keeping track of its assets. Call it a safety measure.”

M waits just long enough to not look eager before he takes the file, handing it off blindly to Q, who stares at the heavy folder like a ticking time bomb that he hasn’t the faintest idea how to defuse. He can probably find a way to block it, especially if he’s finishing the development personally, but Mycroft will be watching for convenient interruptions in tracking or anything that might imply foul play. 

Mycroft sits back, practically exuding satisfaction. 

“Of course, you can’t possibly imagine that I’d use untested technology on my Quartermaster,” M states. “Double-0s are expendable in a way Q is most surely not. You’ll get your tracker- once we know it’s safe. Until then, Director Holmes, perhaps you might consider relying on MI6’s ability to keep track of our own?”

Mycroft’s smile sours. 

“If I may suggest considering your options more thoroughly, Mallory,” he says, standing up to leave. “You know as well as I that a merger is coming. Parliament is… unimpressed… by your handling of the Silva situation and my handling of Moriarty. It is in both of our best interests to learn to cooperate.” 

Mycroft sweeps out before they can reply to his parting words. Q rolls his eyes. Sherlock didn’t learn to be a dramatic little shit from Mummy, that’s for sure. 

“God, I hate that man,” M murmurs under his breath, shaking his head. He waves Q away without glancing up at him, shooing him away. “Back to work, Quartermaster. I expect that tracker to be finished by the time 007 returns from whatever the hell he’s gotten into this time.”

Well, shit.

“Yes, sir.”

When he opens the file, it’s entitled _smart blood_.

James is going to _hate_ it.

Q already does.

 

***

 

James makes a mess in Mexico that leaves MI6 scrambling to cover it up, cancels Q’s upcoming plans with Limos and Thanatos, and puts Thor on the warpath trying to pin it all on Q. Which would be appropriate, really, except that Thor’s brashness makes him particularly ill-suited to those types of games, especially since Q learned to maneuver and avoid suspicion first at Siger Holmes’ side and then at James Moriarty’s. 

Q finishes Mycroft’s smart blood technology- it was almost there, really, which makes Q more suspicious of MI5’s plans for him than he already was- and tests it on 001, much to his consternation, and 004, who criticizes how he monitors her vitals immediately afterwards and points out that she both has medical training _and_ lives with a doctor, so she really ought to be allowed to check herself out of Medical. Neither of them seem to have an adverse reaction to it, so Q gets his orders.

_Retrieval Two has 007. Once he’s been debriefed, tag him, and under no circumstances warn him in any way, shape, or form of what you intend to do._

It feels… deceitful, and he’s never had much compunction about lying, which makes it odd. James will understand. At the very least, Agent 007 will, with all that dedication to Queen and Country that Q has never quite understood, and that’ll have to be good enough. 

It _must_ be good enough. 

He’s grown attached to James. Q’s not so naive to think that they’ll never be parted- they both have rather long lists of enemies, after all, and their careers rest on Q sending James to increasingly dangerous places. James won’t leave that behind and Q can’t, not with Mycroft’s meddling. 

He won’t let that same meddling take James away. 

“Quincy.”

James sweeps into his office with an escort from Retrieval Two hanging awkwardly in the doorway, waving a quick greeting before turning their backs politely. 

“James,” Q murmurs with a gentle yank on his tie, bringing him close enough to brush a kiss next to the nasty scrape on his cheekbone and then a brief, chaste one on his lips. “You came back to me safe.”

“I promised.” James eases Q’s hand from his tie, smoothing it flat, and tugs him to his feet for a almost-too-tight hug and another feather-light kiss, a quick reassurance that he’s alive after being off the grid for weeks on end.

“Well, I hope your detour was successful, at the very least.” Q does his best to sound vaguely irritated, the way he would be with any other Double-0 who vanished, and gives James a gentle shove out the door. He rocks back on his heels, capturing Q’s wrists, and brings one hand up to ghost a final kiss across his palm. 

“I’ll be back soon,” he promises. “Debriefingwith M in five.”

“M’s office is seven minutes away, including security protocols.”

“I know.” His smile flashes quicksilver across his features before he can school them back into 007’s impassivity. He relinquishes Q’s hand and steps away, James’ softness already fading into 007’s… lack. It’s the best word for the difference between them. 007 is a blank slate to be molded into whatever England needs of him, an empty vessel to be filled with today’s cover story, all innuendo and sharp quips to keep the world _away_. James Bond… isn’t. Q can see that more than ever with each passing day.

They’re both equally deadly, though. 

Q won’t forget that.

He shakes himself out of his reverie. 007’s debriefing will not, by any indications, be brief, leaving Q plenty of time to terrify the less strictly governed sections of Q Branch. He’s thinking Covert Communications, perhaps even Appropriately Imperfect Clothes For Everyone Who Isn’t A Double-0. 

“Q,” a minion shouts, weaving through the tangle of desks that they’ve long since given up on keeping in neat, regulation lines. “Q, 009 is here demanding, and I quote, ‘something cool before those pricks steal all the cool shit again’. If I may, I presume he means 006 and 007, as they tend to have the most… kleptomaniac tendencies.”

Q sighs, turning on his heel and heading the other way. 

Paperwork, then. Nobody ever bloody disturbs him when he’s doing paperwork.

 

***

 

That night, James traces the pattern of Q’s veins wordlessly, up and down with a feather light touch. 

“Tickles,” he complains the next time James’ fingers trail across the inside of his elbow. “Go to sleep, James.”

James fits himself to Q’s back instead, fingers still resting on the thrum of blood at his wrist. They don’t exactly know what went on in Mexico, but James only clings quite so tight when he’s come a little closer to death than usual. He hasn’t said anything about the smart blood yet, but he’s been pensive enough that it’s only a matter of time. 

“I was under orders not to tell you,” Q says, lacing his free hand with James’. “Mycroft.”

“He wants a tracker even you can’t remove.”

“And we have a winner.” Q sighs, curling in on himself. “A year of human tests- that’s you lot, by the way- and then he’ll have me more firmly under his thumb than he already does with his favorite threat of all time.”

“Do I have to maim him for this threat?” 

“Not this time, I think.” Q laughs. “ _Don’t do it, Sherrinford, you’ll upset Mummy._ What a joke. It’s almost funnier that she thinks I’ve been dead for two and a half decades and he’s still using the same tattletale threat.”

James doesn’t respond, the silence stretching on long enough that Q’s tempted to give in to the exhaustion creeping up on him and fall asleep to the steady thump of James’ heart and the unhurried rise and fall of his chest. 

“I have a lead,” he finally whispers, uncomfortable sharing the information aloud even in the privacy of Q’s flat- no, it’s theirs, he thinks Alec took over living at James’ place after the last time he went missing long enough for them to sell his place. Their high-security flat in an area that is definitely not on the MI6 shortlist for living spaces, which means no nosy spies living next door. “I have a lead, Quincy, but I need you to make me disappear.”

“Already taken care of,” he mumbles, drifting to sleep. “Technical difficulties will have all the Double-0 trackers on the fritz for forty-eight hours, starting at daybreak. It’s terribly difficult to get the nanobots to agree on a location, you know, and they confuse each other.”

“Thank you.”

“Feed the cats in the morning and we’re square.”

“Done.”

By the time Q wakes in the morning, his alarm turned off and increasingly irritated texts from Eve interspersing the voicemails, James’ side of the bed is long-cold. 

 

***

 

M is annoyed. 

Mycroft is furious. 

Max Denbigh, the soon-to-be head of both agencies, deigns to glance at him a mere twice before disregarding him as unimportant. Q is rumpled and messy, circuitry sprinkled across requisitions forms and a splotch of ink high on one cheekbone that he keeps ‘forgetting’ about. Some of it is the natural detritus of his work, other parts carefully contrived as to make people overlook him. It’s been so long since it genuinely worked- between the agents, his brothers, and James Moriarty, too many people have seen through the awkward techie to the hacker underneath.

“Times like this,” Eve laments over a drink, tucked into an alcove in a raucous little bar where nobody can possibly listen in on their conversation, “times like this you have to miss Jim.”

“He was a psychopath who was bound to kill one or the both of us in a fit of pique sooner or later.” Q considers his own drink, frowning slightly. “And he was _disturbingly_ obsessed with Sherlock.”

“He had style, though.” Eve sighs. “This Denbigh fellow… he’s a bottomfeeder at best.”

“A surprisingly powerful bottomfeeder,” Q muses. “Which makes him either useful or dangerous.” He overlooked Q and treated Eve like a secretary, which means he’s undoubtedly the tool of some far more clever patron, which also means that they might be able to manipulate him. 

Alternatively, it means someone poking their fingers into what’s left of Moriarty’s empire. In that case, they have much more to be worried about. Eve, as Moriarty’s right hand, still holds sway over the key players in the Spider’s game. Q, as Moriarty’s worst kept secret weapon, is officially unaffiliated and up for grabs. 

“Useful, if we can convince him that MI6 is entirely uninteresting and leave him to bother MI5 instead.” Eve shakes her head. “Wishful thinking, I know.”

“Mycroft’ll never leave me be.”

Eve’s phone rings before she can respond to that. She fishes it out of her pocket, gives it a bemused glance, and turns it to face Q.

_BOND CALLING_

Q shrugs. He can make some educated guesses, but that’s all. If James is calling, it means something’s gone wrong. If he’s not calling Q, it means whatever’s gone wrong is going to be flashy enough that he doesn’t want to draw attention down unto Q.

“He needs information about Mr. White,” Eve tells him the minute she hangs up the phone, “and he needs us to keep MI6 off his tail. Says there’s more corruption than we knew about which, frankly, I find doubtful.”

“No offense, Eve, but I’m better at information than you are. Why not call me?”

Eve smiles wickedly. “Because he totaled your prototype Aston Martin that he stole.”

“Bastard,” Q mutters, finishing his drink. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

“This is why _you_ can’t have nice things. I have plenty of nice things because I don’t date paid killers.”

“Only because you are one.”

“You can’t prove that.” Eve smiles, blowing him a kiss and standing up. “Thanks for the drink, Quintilian. Apparently, I have files to steal for your boyfriend.” 

“I can prove that!” he calls after her, dropping his voice again when people turn to look at him. “I can too prove that.”

 

***

 

“Sherrinford, how pleasant to see you.”

Q closes the door and locks it, ignoring the voice coming from his couch. If he closes his eyes and counts to three, he won’t have to deal with this and he can go back to his regularly scheduled explaining to the cats that no, James isn’t here to spoil them with more cat treats than any of them deserve. 

“I hope you don’t mind the imposition, but I had Anthea put the kettle on.”

Still there. Q turns around in a slow pivot, fixing a smile on his face and curling up in his favorite chair, still not acknowledging Mycroft’s presence. His weapons are missing, of course. He suspects Anthea. Mycroft doesn’t get his hands dirty and he certainly doesn’t risk the myriad of petty traps both his brothers are adept with. 

“I hear you’ve lost your pet agent. Again.” Mycroft smirks. “One might almost call that careless.”

“Did you miss an active terrorist living in the heart of London because you were too busy poking your nose into MI6 business?” Q fakes a contrite look. “Shame, that. How many people did Moriarty kill? Let’s start with Sherlock.”

Mycroft’s smile falls. He holds his hand out imperiously for Anthea to bring him a cup of tea, leaving the second mug cooling on the counter. Q ignores it. He wouldn’t drink it if Anthea brought it over and he won’t give Mycroft the satisfaction of going to get it himself. 

“Very well, Sherrinford.”

Q grits his teeth against the name. He thought they’d come to an agreement of sorts regarding Q’s name, but he should’ve expected this. Mycroft, from the limits of Q’s memories of early childhood and his spying on Sherlock, is always insufferable. 

“I’m busy, Mycroft.”

“Please, it’s Director Holmes. I’m here on official business.”

Q rolls his eyes. 

“Official business hours are long over. Say what you’ve come here to say and then get the hell out of my flat.”

“We know you’re behind 007’s… unfortunate technical difficulties, resulting in this newest disappearance and corresponding international scandal to go with it.” Mycroft _tsks_ disapprovingly. “I’m afraid MI5 will have to be taking you in for conspiracy to treason, Sherrinford, held in conjunction with your previous treason, terrorism, premeditated murder, and escaping the Crown’s custody. I won’t protect you from it this time. Sentiment, ever a detriment, still has limits on how far I am willing to compromise my principles.”

Won’t isn’t can’t, which means Mycroft wants something from him in return from further protection from MI5. Something having to do with sentiment, which only ever means one thing with Mycroft Holmes. He would’ve demanded help for Sherlock instead of hedging around it if that were the deal, he’d never come to Q for help himself, Siger Holmes has been dead for years and he already gave Mycroft the coordinates to his headstone in Russia… 

Mummy. 

“I refuse.”

“I haven’t made you an offer.”

“Don’t impugn my intelligence.”

“I won’t hold you hostage, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Mycroft ignores it as Q mutters _again_ under his breath. “Dinner is at six. Wear something appropriate to seeing the mother who has mourned your death for most of your life- whatever that is- and absolutely do not wear green.”

“Green brings out my eyes.”

“Green makes you look like Father. I don’t think you need to upset Mummy further by reminding her of _that man_.” Mycroft spits the last words out with more vitriol than Q’s ever heard in his voice, snarl twisting his features out of their schooled boredom for a moment that hangs in the air between them, the unwelcome specter of the toll Sherrinford and Siger Holmes’ deaths took on the people left behind. Anthea sets her mug down in his kitchen with an overly loud tap of ceramic on granite, startling Mycroft enough for him to pull his ironclad defenses back up. 

“Goodbye, Mycroft,” Q murmurs softly, brooking no disagreement. “No need to send a car for me because, frankly, I don’t trust you and my customizations are better than anything your engineers could whip up anyways.”

Mycroft doesn’t replies, his farewell stilted with only a halfhearted insult about Q’s security measures and an equally lackluster reiteration of his threat to turn Q over to MI5 and all the snafu that would cause. Anthea activates Q’s security system with a knowing look before closing the door behind them. 

Shit. He’s going to have to re-check his entire flat for cameras because apparently he didn’t do a thorough enough job the first time. He slumps down bonelessly into his armchair, pinching the bridge of his nose not to fight off an impending headache but rather as some sort of placebo against the sense that his world is cantilevered over a cliff and the beams are cracking. 

It’s the insults that really get him. At first, he was sure they were a distancing mechanism, a constant reminder of Q’s faults to keep them strictly professional. They can’t be genuine, not with how Mycroft extends his protection for the crimes MI5 can sort of prove even in the time of this merger and a new boss in town. It makes sense that way, or made sense, to be perfectly accurate, until about two minutes ago. Mycroft got shaken up, which should’ve brought the distancing mechanisms out in full force, but the insult was… well, it was pathetic, if Q’s entirely judgmental. (He usually is.)

His phone chimes with an alert, jarring him out of his contemplation of Mycroft’s possible motives. There’s work to be done. It’s one of the more endearing things about MI6- there’s always work to be done. 

Q sighs, opens his laptop, and gets to work. 

 

***

 

He wears green.

Just a tie, and just because he’s sour enough about having to do four separate sweeps of his flat and change all his security codes that he wants to irk Mycroft. He considers a green shirt when he has to escape through the window to the prototype car he had the good sense to hide two streets over rather than face MI5 lurking in his garage to escort him, but he’s fairly fond of _not_ changing his clothes in cars. 

He looks like sodding Sherlock, minus the coat and plus a little more weaponry. It’d be _polite_ , perhaps, to go unarmed. On the other hand, he’s mostly going under duress, doesn’t trust either Mycroft or Mummy further than he can throw them, and his suits are all cut to compensate for a shoulder holster anyways. Q frowns at his reflection in the rearview mirror, tugging idly at his hair. Nothing he can do about it now short of a haphazard hack job with the knife in his sleeve. 

At least Mummy will sort of recognize him, for better or for worse. 

Q squeezes the steering wheel until his knuckles whiten. Mycroft better keep MI5 off his back for this. He’s been avoiding Mummy for a reason- Sherlock and Mycroft were children, but Mummy would’ve felt the full betrayal of her husband’s disappearance with her youngest. He can’t exactly be _blamed_ for it, with the whole being four years old thing- it’s one of the few things in his life he takes absolutely no responsibility for. 

Mycroft doesn’t send him to the Holmes Estate, his erstwhile prison and childhood home, with its drafty formal halls and memories haunting the halls for every one of them. Instead, Q winds through a sleepy town to a red brick cottage with overflowing gardens in front, parking next to the nondescript black sedan in front. The MI5 driver leaning against the hood, cigarette held loosely between two fingers, salutes him lazily. 

“Quartermaster.”

“Agent.”

He doesn’t pause to steel himself with the agent watching- which was probably entirely Mycroft’s intention- and knocks sharply on the front door. Another MI5 agent opens the door promptly- the rest of Mycroft’s security detail, Q guesses, and thanks be to M that neither Mansfield nor Mallory have seen fit to assign him one. The Double-0s are bad enough. He had to send Alec out of the country to get him to stop trailing Q around London while James is AWOL. 

“Quintilian, do come in,” Mycroft calls from around a corner. Q steps in and the agents steps out, closing the door with a sharp click and giving them some modicum of privacy as he rounds the bend. “Meet Violet Holmes.”

Q looks anywhere but at Mummy when he enters the sitting room. There’s the plethora of books lining the shelves and stacked in increasingly precarious piles where there isn’t any more room, the fire crackling merrily in the hearth, the well-worn red cushions on the armchairs with slightly lopsided knit blankets draped over the backs. To his eye, it’s all rather telling: the books are leatherbound and embossed as often as they’re dogeared paperbacks, the fire tools are functional rather than decorative, and the chairs have solid wood frames that say expensive but the upkeep says careless. Someone for whom money is a non-entity, where it will never be an issue, but also not the stuffy formal rooms for entertaining in high society. 

The painting hanging crooked in the way that means hidden safe, the extra width that doesn’t need to be there in the foyer wall, and the caches of various weapons strewn among the knickknacks and tucked in shadowed corners all say that Violet Holmes may have left active service in MI6 forty years ago and left the organization entirely twenty five years ago, but she’s never forgotten to take precautions.

“You foolish boy.”

Violet Holmes’ voice cracks through the room sharply and Q jerks his head up in response, meeting pale eyes just like his own. The last time he saw Mummy in person, he was four years old and waving to his mother as Father pulled down the long gravel drive, headed for town to get groceries with two bodies in the trunk to fake their deaths. 

They’ve both changed a lot since then. 

There’s the age lining her face that he expected, but the deeply etched laugh lines and white hair twisted up into a neat chignon are still a shock to see. He should’ve been expecting the mingled sadness and anger in her clear eyes, the trace of pity that’s too often present in Mycroft’s gaze and the betrayal he saw in Sherlock’s. Violet Holmes is a stranger in so many respects, but he still cowers before her gaze like he did the last time he stood before her covered in paint with Sherlock saying _it was his idea, Mummy, not mine_. 

“Hello, Mummy.”

“Sit down, Sherrinford.”

“He goes by Quintilian these days,” Mycroft corrects as Q takes a seat across from them wordlessly. “Father apparently saw fit to ensure Sherrinford Holmes remained quite dead.”

Q shoots an irritated glare at Mycroft, who offers a smug smile over his teacup and raises a single eyebrow in challenge. Q considers scowling back- he would, except for the whole Mummy thing, and Mycroft knows it. 

“Mycroft told you,” Q blurts out when Mycroft seems content to sip his tea in peace and Mummy doesn’t do anything but memorize every plane of his face, glancing occasionally at the photographs on the mantlepiece. “He told you I was alive already.”

“Mycroft and I will be having _words_ about his lack of any such thing later,” Mummy snaps with a cross look at her eldest.

She doesn’t deny that somebody told her. By the way that Mycroft isn’t throwing him under the bus of Mummy’s wrath with the whole thing that he might sort of be a part-time terrorist, she already knows. It would explain the pistol lying next to the teapot and the stiletto lying on on the twisting stack of books to the right of her chair, a more blatant show of force than retired MI6 agents tend to prefer. 

“Olivia Mansfield.”

Mummy smiles.

“Olive was a good friend, when Queen and Country permitted her to have any.” Mummy sets her cup down and folds her hands in her lap. “She also believed in both the strengths and the pitfalls of family.”

Orphans make the best recruits- no ties to stop them from being sent out to die. The rest of them are better off with families, with ties to bind them tighter to England and to give them something to go home to after the horrors they see at work. It’s a remarkably effective system, if one that Mallory can’t quite bring himself to emulate- something about being heartless to pick the cannon fodder that will be missed the least. 

Q knows there’s another reason to it. It’s easier to see everyone as a threat, to smile and steal and kiss and kill when nobody’s allowed close. It’s why he can count on one hand the people he genuinely trusts- James, of course, and Limos and Thanatos- and even then he takes precautions to keep his work separate from his personal life. He also knows that Mummy knows that as well as he does and that they both know it better than Mycroft. 

“Why did you bury your father in Russia?”

Q reels for a moment. He’d been expecting a demand that he help Sherlock, a promise to defend England, or accusations of his actions and inactions. He wasn’t expecting Mummy to bring Father up after Mycroft’s insistence against green. 

“The Kremlin buried Father in Russia. I tracked him down five months too late to do anything more than mark his grave.”

“And why did the Kremlin feel the need to kill my husband?”

“Because he got careless.” Q takes a deep breath. He doesn’t like talking about Father. “Because he broke with powerful people when I couldn’t watch his back and because he had more ambition than sense. It was bound to happen eventually.”

He snaps the last words more sharply than he expected to and glances down at his lap. It’s been long enough that he only has little snippets of Father’s memory, faint sense-memories that catch him by surprise sometimes and twine through the stories of his childhood that he repeats to himself lest he lost those, too. Q stares at his hands, looking up at Mummy only when he can’t stay silent a moment longer.

“I just wasn’t expecting it to happen sooner than later.”

“Have it your way, Mycroft,” Mummy murmurs, none of them quite willing to break to empty quiet in between their chairs. “I’ll do whatever I need to do to bring all my boys home.”

Mycroft smiles, steepling his fingers and giving Q a smug look that makes him feel like he’s been played for a fool. 

“Pleased to hear that we’re all finally in agreement.”

 

***

 

“Madeleine Swann.”

Q doesn’t respond to the name, reclaiming what’s left of Moriarty’s network and tying them to Eve. He hasn’t told her that she’s getting a horde of Moriarty’s more effective minions yet, of course-it’s something like payback for something or the other that she’s done. Or a gift. He should probably phrase it as a gift.

“Madeleine Swann,” Eve repeats a little louder, sliding onto the edge of his desk and pressing two fingers into the underside of Q’s jaw to make him look up. “Imagine my surprise when I heard that name from James Bond, of all people. In the right circles, Madeleine Swann’s just as legendary as Quintilian Holmes and believed to be just as mythic.”

Definitely a gift. If Q needed more of a reminder that Eve knows far more than he ought to be comfortable with, that was it. Too many people know who he is now and- if it gets out in those selfsame circles- he could be in trouble. There were too many years where Quintilian Holmes was pulling increasingly difficult heists and attracting attention before he learned to use a pseudonym. 

He sighs.

“007 is in for quite a merry chase if he hopes to find Madeleine Swann.”

“Unfortunately for you,” Eve grins wolfishly, “Mr. White knew where his daughter was hiding out. Is your interest peaked?”

Q jerks to his feet, snapping his laptop shut and shoving it in his bag with a few items from the emergency kit he keeps in his office. James if far too close to things he can’t see, the darkest depths of the criminal underworld circling like sharks after a scent, and he’s made Q care too damn much to risk losing him over things Q could’ve prevented. 

“I’ll just pretend you aren’t vanishing into the night,” Eve calls after him. “I’m sure M and C will love that.”

“It’s daytime,” he retorts, dialing Mycroft for an emergency flight to Switzerland and the number for a burner phone where he can possibly reach Sherlock. 

“Melodrama doesn’t care!”

 

***

 

He puts himself on Madeleine Swann’s appointment list, bumping one of James’ aliases down the list a few spots for good measure, and then takes enough tranquilizers to make the entire plane ride hazy instead of terrifying. 

 

***

 

“Quentyn Harrison.”

Madeleine glances up from her clipboard, pressing a button to close all the shades in her floor-to-ceiling glass office as she sinks into her ergonomic office chair. Her eyes flick up to meet his sharply the moment the shades are closed, holding his gaze. 

“Reseph.”

“Limos.”

“I should’ve known it was you the minute I saw that name.” Madeleine sets her clipboard down and crosses her arms. “What on Earth are you doing here?”

“MI6 knows where you are. Well,” he cuts in when she starts to protest, “I have a rogue agent who knows where you are.”

Madeleine reaches across her desk, snagging his hand and pulling him down to sit on the edge of her desk so he’ll stop pacing. 

“Settle, Quintilian.”

“I made sure I wasn’t followed,” he says grimly, “but James is rarely so careful.”

“Then you’d best disappear. The boss wants you back badly, Reseph, more than he wants Thanatos and I safely ensconced in his fortress.” Madeleine squeezes his hand tight enough to hurt before releasing him to peek around her heavy shades at the bright and snowy world outside. “Go quickly. I’ll deal with your rogue agent.”

Q joins her at the window long enough to see the town at the base of the mountain before Madeleine smoothes the shade back into place. They’ll speak later. There may not be prying ears in Madeleine’s office- undercover or not, she’d never permit that- but there are certainly the prying eyes of her coworkers. Better to be safe and entirely anonymous. 

“Be careful, Madeleine. That rogue agent of mine can be persistent.”

“Quincy, I think you telling me to be careful dances on the edge of hypocrisy.”

Q smiles. “Better than Thanatos.”

“I must disagree.”

 

***

 

He gets careless. 

Madeleine is _never_ going to let him forget this.

 

***

 

“Quintilian Holmes,” Thor purrs. “It’s been ages.”

“You’ve always been a smug fucker,” he tells Thor. “I’ve been considering murdering you for it, but who has the time for murder these days.”

Thor backhands him for that one. 

Q spits the blood in his face.

It sort of escalates from there.

They don’t ask him any questions, they don’t make any accusations, they just… make it very clear that his disappearance and subsequent refusal to continue working for SPECTRE is unappreciated. It’s a very clear message. 

He is so murdering Thor.

 

***

 

“Wake up.”

Somebody shakes him by the shoulders, careful not to crack his head against the faintly damp concrete floor. Q cracks an eye, closing it again the moment he confirms it’s not Thor or his band of cronies. 

“Wake _up_.”

“F’off, Sh’lock,” he mumbles, curling in tighter on himself.

“Sherrinford,” Sherlock hisses, “we have fifteen minutes before someone notices I drugged the guards and it takes twenty to get you out.”

Q blinks blearily, Sherlock’s face resolving into blurry angles and a shock of half-tamed curls. He closes his eyes, waits a moment, then opens them again. Still Sherlock, still blurry, and Q still hurts. He reaches up hazily for his brother, calloused hands closing around his forearms and yanking him up to list sideways against Sherlock’s frame. 

“Why are you here?”

“Because somewhere in the middle of insulting him, insulting his job, and upsetting Mummy you managed to endear yourself to Mycroft.” Sherlock tries to take a step, then another, half-dragging Q until he gets the hang of keeping his feet under him again. “Are you going to help or not?”

“Not,” Q mumbles, but takes his own weight anyways. Sherlock’s arm is looped around his ribcage, a tight band of force steadying him and making what he suspects is a cracked rib ache. “How?”

“Drugs, guards, a handy bit of pickpocketing.” 

“Not that.” Q shakes his head, trying to clear his head somewhat. “How did you find me? Thor’s an asshole, but he’s good at what he does.”

“You did.” Sherlock’s voice softens even as his pace quickens. “Mycroft found your puzzle. Your Agent 007 reported you missing, your hotel room trashed, and Mycroft called me.”

Sherlock pulls them back into the shadows as the alarm rings out a full three minutes earlier than he’d predicted, waiting there long enough for Thor’s cronies to stalk by quickly. Q rolls his eyes. Thor’s too image-conscious for his cronies to run anywhere. Q can only imagine how often it gets them shot. 

“You knew they were going to take you.”

“I knew they were going to try.”

He walked away from SPECTRE, after all, in favor of freelancing and then Moriarty and then MI6, and nobody leaves SPECTRE. Even Limos and Thanatos don’t quite dare to leave. He almost wonders if part of the reason SPECTRE seems to be taunting James is because the boss is trying to draw Q out of hiding. If so, it’s working. 

“Don’t try to bluff me, it doesn’t _work_.” Sherlock drags them out, moving as quickly as Q can and trying to watch all their flanks at once. “You injected yourself with Mycroft’s tracker and gave him access. There’s no undoing that, Sherrinford, and I know you’re smart enough to realize that.”

“Am I supposed to thank you for that, William?”

Sherlock scowls at him. “Have it your way, Quintilian. I won’t stop you from having a terrible name.”

“Nobody seems to have stopped you.”

They slide into the seats of a stolen car- at least Q assumes it’s stolen, unless Sherlock’s taste runs to pastel seat covers and tacky ornaments dangling from the rearview mirror these days. There’s a full tank of gas, a pile of maps in the back with what looks like a few burner phones, and a laptop tucked under the passenger seat just waiting for Q to erase any hints of their trail. 

“Where to?” Sherlock asks once they’re three towns over and Q’s left half a dozen false trails of varying strength under four false identities Thor knows he uses and two he doesn’t think Thor knows about. 

“You can drop me at the nearest train station and give Mycroft my regards.”

“A secret criminal organization trying to kill my little brother?” Sherlock smiles, a bright mad smile that hasn’t changed since they were so very young and doing foolish things before dinner. “How could I resist?”

 

***

 

The train rattles down the track, a steady unsteadiness that’s almost soothing after far too much time bouncing down dirt roads in an assortment of stolen cars. Sherlock picks at his dinner, lingering over the few bites he’ll deign to eat, and Q always rushes over his like it’s the last time he’ll eat for days. He only ever manages the barest of polite table manners- James despairs of him for it- and always ends up with his plate scraped clean long before Sherlock decides he’s finished. 

Sherlock frowns over his plate as Q pushes his own away, folding his napkin atop the last smears of sauce and weighing it down with his silverware. 

“Didn’t Father ever teach you manners?”

“Oh, don’t start,” he groans, slumping back dramatically and staring skyward. “Not all of us grew up with garden parties and visits to the Palace.”

“No, you just grew up with some of the most successful criminals in the world. Rather more interesting than dreary garden parties in England, you might agree.”

“I would not.”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. 

“Good criminals are dreadfully dull, all accounting and quiet, boring lives that fly under the radar. The rest of them, the ones you like, live like that for ages until they supernova into something gloriously interesting and mildly terrifying and people like you take them down. Interesting criminals are very quickly dead criminals, whether by the long arm of the law or the more vicious one of their rivals.” Q rattles off the words with sharp-tongued efficiency, every syllable perfectly enunciated as to strip any discernible accent from his words. Sherlock looks at him like some strange creature he has yet to figure out, cocking his head ever so slightly to the side and narrowing his eyes. 

Q groans. He’s grown to dread that look, as it is usually the prelude to either an interrogation consisting mostly of being so irritating that Q chooses to appease him or a sullen silence while Sherlock mulls over things in his head and snaps at anyone who disturbs him. Either way, it’s become enough of a remarkably unpleasant fixture in his day that he almost longs for Mycroft’s veiled threats and hedged questions. 

“Your voice changed.”

“Some of us chose to turn a modicum of acting talent into subtler sciences than dressing up like a clergyman to break into a safe.”

“What accent is that?”

“It isn’t.” Q pauses for a moment, decides he doesn’t want to deal with Sherlock trying to pry every detail out of him, and offers up a little more. “That’s rather the point, to sound like I belong everywhere and nowhere. Rather more conspicuous when among ordinary people, but standard for anyone who grew up in the SPECTRE compounds.”

Q’s fingers tighten on his silverware as he registers his slip and the bright light of discovery that accompanies it in Sherlock’s expression. He closes his eyes, evening out his breath and setting his silverware down blindly, forcing the calm to wash over him. 

“That’s how Father stayed hidden for so many years.” Sherlock hesitates for a fraction of a moment. “Mummy’s always wondered, you know. A notorious thief and smuggler coming out of retirement, young child in tow… that’s the kind of thing that makes ripples, but it was like you just vanished. Aunt Olive told her to be prepared for the idea that he might’ve killed or abandoned you in order to mislead anyone chasing him.”

That sounds like her.

Q shoves his plate away and stands up, startling the diners at the other end of the car. Sherlock watches him go with an uncharacteristic silence, fingers steepled under his chin, and the train rattles onwards through the sand. 

He hates that Sherlock makes him feel guilty about disappearing. It’s not like he had a choice, like he knew what was going on- he only has vague memories of being that young, memories that leave Sherlock and Mycroft half a stranger even on the best of days. He remembers Father pulling him out of his carseat, smelling of aftershave and something Q didn’t yet know was gunpowder, and he remembers Father kneeling down in the grass to take him by the shoulders. _Sherrinford Holmes is dead,_ he said more firmly than Q had ever heard him before, _you have to_ listen _to me, my boy. Sherrinford Holmes died in that car. Your name is Quintilian. You do not have a mother or brothers. Do you understand?_

He didn’t, but he told Father that he did. Repeated the words back to him every year on the anniversary of their disappearance, Sherrinford’s birthday, Quintilian’s birthday… they were meaningless platitudes to him, a promise that he barely remembered making and never felt the consequences of until this moment. 

He chose this. 

He never chose this. 

Somehow, that distinction doesn’t seem to matter to the ones who remember being left behind and Q’s the only one left to take the blame.

Sherlock doesn’t return to their suite for hours. It’s a small kindness, but a kindness all the same. Q stays curled up in his bed, covers twisted around him, and Sherlock sits silently in his own bed and reads until the light starts to break over the horizon again. 

“You can’t go with me,” he murmurs into the break of dawn, words half-hidden by the clatter of the wheels. “When we get to the compound, Sherlock, you can’t go with me.”

“And why might that be?”

“Because some things I have to face on my own.” Q heaves in a deep breath, staring at the wall instead of his brother. “Because I don’t think I’m going to survive this and- and I can accept that. I’ll do that to save them both, because this has been about me all along and at some point, other people have to stop dying just so I can keep my freedom.”

Sherlock’s agreement, when it comes, is a quietly murmured _I understand_ into the dim morning light. It barely even makes Q flinch. 

 

***

 

The boss himself greets Q at the gate to SPECTRE’s compound in the desert, pristine suit a sharp contrast against the dusty buildings and the vast expanse of dunes around them. Sand whips in haphazard swirls through the central courtyard, smoothing every stone into something beautiful and scratching the glass into something less so, a dozen workers working to keep the buildings ever pristine. It’s an extravagance that’s familiar to Q from his youth- Siger Holmes led the branch of SPECTRE concerned with smuggling art and luxury goods from the time Q was six until he was sixteen. 

It’s why they’re so desperate to get him back. Part of why, at least. 

“The prodigal son returns,” Blofeld says, arms held out as if for a hug Q desperately dreads even as he takes two shuddering steps forward and lets the man wrap his arms too tight around him. “Welcome home, Quintilian. We’ve missed you so very much.”

“I’m happy to be home,” he answers hollowly. “I never should have left.”

“Good,” Blofeld purrs, holding him at arm’s length to get a good look at him, “because I have a surprise prepared just for you”

 

***

 

He’s going to kill Limos. 

The routines of living in the heart of SPECTRE were graven on their bones as children- the rap on the door at five thirty, breakfast served promptly at seven with a formal dress code- so when Limos slips into her seat five minutes late, he hands her the marmalade without being asked. Thanatos flanks his other side, the three of them a little cluster at the far end of Blofeld’s table, and a seat sits empty next to Limos where Thor always installed himself. 

Thor’s long since moved himself up the table, according to Thanatos, but nobody dares fill his seat. Blofeld smiles fondly down the table at them, his favorite little pets all together now, and yet the staff serve them as quickly as possible and skitter away. He’d almost forgotten about that part. The staff was fond of them as children, always underfoot and the cause of some truly remarkable pranks at SPECTRE meetings, but as they turned over and the Horsemen became notorious in their own right, people became as wary of them as of Blofeld. 

“Reseph, Thanatos,” Limos greets them, her hair loose about her shoulders in her only concession to the early hour. “How utterly terrible to see you here this morning.”

“Enough of that,” Thanatos chides over her eggs, braids spilling over one shoulder and swaying precariously close to her breakfast. “This is not the time nor the place for any of that.”

They eat slowly, careful not to splash orange juice on silk or coffee on crisp white shirts, each one of them supremely uncomfortable in their own way. Q shoots glances at Limos, who pointedly avoids his eyes- and if that doesn’t confirm that James is here somewhere, nothing will- and Thanatos watches the rest of the room and shushes them anytime someone approaches their end of the table. 

“Thor’s dead,” Limos blurts out, keeping her voice down even still. “After he lost you, he found us on the train. I don’t know how I didn’t think of it- there’s only the one train, after all, and your James is remarkably unsubtle about chasing what he wants.”

“Quincy has a James?” Imani asks with a quizzical look between them, dropping some of the formal facade. “And for some reason you were with him and Quincy arrived alone?”

“Thor,” Q offers as an explanation. Imani looks from him to Madeleine, who repeats his answer with a shrug. 

“He’s handsome and worried sick over Quincy,” Madeleine confides. “And also held under guard since the moment we arrived. The boss has a personal interest, apparently.”

“If he kills James, I’m going to rip SPECTRE down millimeter by agonizing millimeter,” Q swears, “and just you try to stop me.”

“Stop you?” Imani glances down the table again, a wicked smile beginning to curve her lips. “Why in the world would we do that?”

Blofeld stands at the head of the table and clears his throat loudly. The quiet hubbub that always accompanied breakfast, the murmur of quiet conversation and the scrape of silverware over plates, cuts out into a genuine silence. Madeleine reaches under the table to squeeze Q’s hand and he, in turn, reaches for Imani’s. 

“My dear Horsemen,” he begins. The entire room swivels in a shuffle that’s painfully loud in the otherwise quiet room to look at the three of them. “I regret to inform you of the tragic loss of one of your own. War will be dearly missed.”

“Not by any of us,” Q whispers under his breath. Imani chokes on her amusement and Madeleine puts on a suitably solemn face for all three of them. Blofeld ignores their quiet interruptions and continues monologuing about the return of Pestilence and Famine back to their homes, the promotion of Death to head of the Four Horsemen- to which Imani asks Q and Madeleine if she ever _wasn’t_ \- and how he’ll be very personally attending to Pestilence’s reintegration into SPECTRE.

And then he stands there, hand held out, and waits for Q to come to him. 

Q sighs, holding Blofeld’s gaze for as long as it takes to close the distance, leaving Madeleine and Imani whispering to each other as he strides through the gauntlet of Blofeld’s favored. 

“I have a… gift to welcome you back,” Blofeld murmurs, squeezing Q’s shoulder a little too tight. “Something to make you remember where your loyalty lies.”

“Delightful.”

 

***

 

His surprise is the flash of heat the breaks through 007’s bored facade, the moment caught between relief to see Q and anger that he’s not safe in a London bunker. 

“I caught your little mouse,” Blofeld stage-whispers, never taking his eyes off 007. “MI6’s favored son, the mighty James Bond, scourge of the underworld. Not so imposing, is he?”

“I don’t know,” Q muses, striding around the side of the room to get a better look at barren white walls and too many mechanized bits for the fact that there are three internationally renowned hackers on the premises. His hands almost itch for a phone, at the very least, if not a tablet. “I’ve been on the other side of his comms often enough. I promise you that Agent Bond is exactly as good as the rumors might say.”

“And I suppose you would know the truth behind… _all_ … the rumors.”

Q raises an eyebrow. “I can’t possibly know what you’re insinuating.”

“Oh, I think you do.” Blofeld strolls over to 007, aligning his gaze with James’ to watch Q pace the room. “Take a good look, cuckoo. When I’m done with you, you won’t even remember who he is.”

“It’ll take more than your tricks to do that,” James purrs, letting his gaze drop to Q’s arse with a wink. Blofeld scoffs, striding to his console, and completely misses 007’s facade settling over James’s face while he fiddles with the clasp of his watch. Q meanders, making his disinterest in either of them clear, as Blofeld monologues and James rolls his eyes. 

And then his machine fizzles and dies the minute he gives a command, bringing his monologue to an abrupt halt as it spits sparks halfheartedly at him. 

Q hides a smile. James doesn’t bother. 

“Pestilence,” he growls, twisting fast enough in his rolling chair that he over-rotates and has to turn himself back the other way. It rather ruins the effect. 

“You took all my electronics the minute I arrived on the premises.”

Blofeld’s outrage is interrupted by the opening of the door, a swirl of dust curling inside the pristine room, and the sharp crack of noise as both his bodyguards are summarily shot.

“Did you really think I left that horrid thing untouched?” Imani steps in, leaving the door open behind her. “Now, if you’d be so kind as to free Quincy’s gentleman from his restraints, I do believe this will suffice as my resignation.”

 

***

 

Things end up in flames. 

That seems to happen a lot with 007’s missions and, much like when Q’s on the other side of the comms, he isn’t entirely sure how it happened. There was Madeleine setting off an explosion on the far side of the compound to draw off the guards, rejoining them with smoke clinging to her and a smear of grease forgotten over her cheekbone, and then Sherlock calling in an airstrike from the gates. 

Eve will be entirely too amused by the whole thing, he’s sure of it. 

 

***

 

They don’t sleep as the train rattles through the night, onwards towards civilization and the Retrieval team that waits for them there. They just curl into each other, careful of the lingering damage left on the both of them from recent not-so-gentle treatment, and listen to the steady thump of their hearts. 

“I should’ve come after you myself,” James murmurs into the curve of Q’s shoulder, brushing his fingers lightly across the bruises splotching his ribs. “I chose chasing a ghost over protecting you. I chose wrong.”

“The danger to Queen and Country comes before any of our lives,” he answers, whispering the words into the stillness between them. “We both know that.”

“I never thought to hear those words from you.”

“I never thought to hear those words from me, either.”

 

 

***

 

“Mr. Bond,” Mycroft greets them on the tarmac, unfazed as Sherlock breezes past them all to the waiting car. “I do not particularly appreciate that MI5 has now joined MI6 in betting on your continued survival, though admittedly I did win a tidy sum of money off it.”

“Is that why your Retrieval team kept us waiting for five days?”

Mycroft shrugs, a smile tugging at the edge of his lips. “There may have also been a slight incident with the murder of one Mr. Max Denbigh, dissolving the impending merger of MI5 and MI6. A sniper shot him in his office. Quite an impossible shot, or so I am led to believe.”

“How unfortunate.”

“How unfortunate indeed.” Mycroft turns to Q, extending a crisply folded piece of paper. “Mr. Holmes, I do believe Mummy is expecting us at dinner and if we don’t hurry, Sherlock will dash off and upset her with his absence. Again.” 

Q unfolds the paper, taking in a birth certificate better even than he could forge for one Quintilian Holmes and revealing new identification. A whole new legal identity, if he understands Mycroft correctly, but one that comes with the strings of brothers attached. 

“Call me Quincy,” Q says in answer, taking James’ hand and squeezing while he tucks the papers away in his bag. “I think you ought to call me Quincy.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can always find me on Tumblr (nagapdragon.tumblr.com) where I relish every chance to talk about my work. Thanks for reading!


End file.
